Let's give credit where it's due: BART has been putting in work. New fleet cars that don't smell like a crime scene from 1987. Actual fare enforcement. Gate improvements that make it marginally harder to just waltz through without paying. Crime stats heading in the right direction. By most internal metrics, BART is running a tighter ship than it has in years.

So why is ridership still lagging behind 2019 levels?

Because BART's biggest problem has nothing to do with BART.

Downtown San Francisco's office vacancy rate has ballooned from roughly 5% in 2019 to a staggering 28% today. That's not a ridership problem — that's an economic crisis wearing a transit mask. You can have the cleanest trains on the planet, but if a quarter of the offices they're shuttling people to are sitting dark and empty, the seats are going to stay empty too.

As one Bay Area commuter put it bluntly, "BART is more of a commuter train than an all-purpose transportation like they have in NYC." That's the core issue. BART was designed around the premise that hundreds of thousands of workers flood into downtown five days a week. When that premise collapses — thanks to remote work, fleeing businesses, and an urban core that city leadership allowed to deteriorate — the whole ridership model collapses with it.

The vacancy rate has actually come down from its peak a couple years ago, which is a sliver of good news. But 28% is still catastrophic. And it should tell you something that BART's recovery is fundamentally tethered to whether San Francisco can convince companies to keep — or bring back — their offices here.

This is why it's maddening when city officials treat transit funding and downtown revitalization as separate conversations. They're the same conversation. Every empty office tower is a few thousand missing BART riders. Every new tax or regulatory burden that nudges a company toward Austin or Miami is a hit to BART's farebox.

BART can't fix this alone. The agency has done its homework. Now it's on City Hall to do theirs — cut the red tape, make downtown competitive again, and stop pretending that vibes and festivals will fill 28% vacancy. Businesses need real reasons to be here, and commuters need somewhere worth commuting to.