I'm not saying BART is good, let alone perfect. It has Train Attendants (not drivers), whatever the Union wants to call them, whose primary job is to hold the doors open if people are still trying to cram in (needed because BART still can't run enough trains close enough together, so people (rightly) don't want to wait 20 minutes for the next one at rush hour and maybe miss their bus connection at the other end); make occasional announcements that aren't otherwise on the computer/tape deck; and if it all goes to (*&^*( push the big red button, call in, and maybe limp into the next station using the manual (low-speed only) controller. If (as I suspect) BART is paying them at "driver" rates they are paying too much. But that's public transit in the Big City, and it has little to do with whether BART is a huge evil conspiracy or not. Frankly, most of the time, it works, and compared to the other transit lines in the Bay Area it covers much more of its operating expense from fares than most.

Isn't the AirBART cable car driverless? In that kind of operation, driverless is pretty common.