MOTD

I just got off the phone with a reporter from the East Bay Express. She was writing about the petition to keep BART open until 3am on weekends to cut down on drunk driving and to let folks stay out and party late.

She found my BART Petition Rebuttal thread and mailed me asking for an interview. I was trying to coordinate times, and noticed her message was posted 1 hour in the future. I realized that she was in mountain time, and George Perry reminded me that the East Bay Express is owned by the same conglomerate that owns the SF Weekly.

So I basically sent her a mail saying "I can call you, but if it's long distance I can send you my number." Whoops! She's in Emeryville, using the newtimes mail system (some novell thing).

I was satisfied with her level of skepticism, which is refreshing after spending so many years talking to bubbly tech press who take every word you say and repeat it to avoid doing any work. I guess I forget that computer news is really special and separate from even the more corporately-managed free weeklies.

So she didn't seem to buy that the problems were all technological, and that's a fair point. The issue of money came up, but I'm sadly not as familiar with the particulars of the BART financial hemmorhage beyond occasional quotes that they're trying to reduce the yearly net cost per rider to $28. The one thing I did point out is that night work is typically much more expensive than daytime, and they could likely save money if they found some way to do maintenance during the day without stopping service.