Many of BART's "innovations" were failures because they had already been tried before and found wanting. Perhaps BART should have gone for the Erie Railroad's 6 foot gauge - the lessons of history might have helped them snap back to reality and grasp the magnitude of their folly.

BART suffers from puffery and denial; it is ashamed of being a just a plain old railroad. There is no excuse for its stupid mistakes, which were obvious from the beginning. What BART needs is to sit in the funding corner for a long while, a good dose of benign neglect. Let the empire fend for itself, the way more humble electric rail operations have had to for so many years.