I wish I could be as rational and sanguine as Old Pole Burner but obviously I am not. When I first came to the Bay Area in l966 all the older rail fans told me about the BART gauge issue and they were shaking their collective heads in frustration. They told me that smarter and wiser minds had tried to talk to BART about the inadvisability of non-standard gauge but BART wouldn't hear of it. Their imperious attitude hasn't changed one iota in the intervening decades.

For the amount of money BART has sucked out of the Bay Area the trains should be operating at 100mph. I have got to dig up some newspaper reports about the first week of BART operations on the Fremont line. I can't imagine that cab speedometer that read 101 was in km/hr.

I rate transit vehicles by how good they look and how fun and comfortable they are to ride. Speed counts a lot. If riding the rails is a drudgery I don't see much hope for the industry. In terms of quality of riding experience a Golden Gate Transit MCI bus easily beats out BART in its current worn iteration.

Seeing as how I am probably going to get flamed anyway I might as well throw out a good one. Years ago I was told by a wonderful gentleman who is no longer with us, who worked in transit, was well known in fan circles, and who had many friends on the inside that it was understood that BART did not really have a choice about the gauge issue. How shall I put this delicately - let's say that Southern Pacific management, in the midst of dumping passenger service, was mightily, mightily pleased at BART's decision to adopt broad gauge. No worries about BART wheels getting anywhere close to SP rails, a fact that remains true today. .