Let that sink in for a second. The last time BART trains were running this reliably, the iPhone 6 hadn't dropped yet and San Francisco was still pretending it could build a functioning bus rapid transit line. A decade is a long time to wait for a system that costs riders and taxpayers billions to simply... work.

And that's the thing. Nobody's asking BART to reinvent the wheel. Riders just want to get from Point A to Point B without mysterious 20-minute delays and garbled announcements about "equipment problems." The fact that hitting basic reliability benchmarks is newsworthy tells you everything about how low the bar has been set.

Still, improvement is improvement. BART has invested in fleet modernization with its newer train cars, and those investments appear to be paying dividends in actual performance — not just glossy press releases. This is what accountability looks like when agencies are forced to justify their budgets with results instead of promises.

The question now is whether this is a trend or a blip. BART's ridership is still well below pre-pandemic levels, and the agency faces a looming fiscal cliff that could undo operational gains if leadership decides to paper over structural budget problems with fare hikes and bailout requests instead of real reform.

We'd love to see BART build on this momentum by doubling down on what works: maintaining equipment, keeping stations safe and clean, and running a tight operational ship. Taxpayers have poured enormous resources into this system. A quarter of on-time trains shouldn't be a celebration — it should be the baseline.

But hey, progress is progress. Keep it up, BART. We're watching.