Maintenance workers (and other service employees) approve new contract, station agents and train operators reject it: http://bart.gov/news/articles/2009/news20090811.aspx

More:

http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_13037270

Basically, if management and one of the unions follow through on what they say they will do, a strike is likely.

http://www.ktvu.com/news/20351013/de...108132009&ts=H

At the risk of being "omni-ized" I note the average BART union worker makes $114,000 per year in wages and benefits. Given the current economic situation, there will be no shortage of replacement worker applicants if the union strikes.

Agreed. Commuters will be most affected, followed by people like me who make 2 or 3 roundtrip flights a month solo. I'll now be paying $80 for a taxi rather than $16 for BART. I haven't used a shuttle in years (I hate not having control over my departure time), so I don't know what that costs.

For a family of four, BART is up to $64 to downtown, so a taxi is only a little more and may save time. Of course, that assumes you can find a taxi.

For that price, you might as well park at SMA with a coupon for $7 a day. That would cover 10 days plus tax. Some here even park at BART for $6 a day in the west Bay..

I would do just that, but I don't have a car. I hope I can bum a ride at least once or twice until this is settled to save some $$.

Most people agree with you.

Training them and getting things up to speed unfortunately would take quite awhile. Well, at least they don't have to train station agents to make change and sell tickets.

As of right now, Saturday morning, the strike is still back on starting with the beginning of service on Monday (August 17) due to the train operators/station agent union voting down the contract. Could still change....but not looking great.

Edited to add: SAMtrans has announced that the KX bus will add stops so it can be taken to/from SFO and Millbrae BART where you can connect to Caltrain to and from San Francisco. Might well be darn crowded though!

I don't think it'll last that long, but man, can you imagine what this would be like if it lasts until Labor Day weekend when the bay bridge is scheduled to be closed again?

Do you have any idea if they've dropped the no-luggage restriction on the KX bus during the strike? Checked Samtrans' webpage, but didn't see any info on that detail.

I think the information missing here is that the vast majority of these people are engineers and other highly-skilled laborers who could make more working comparable jobs in private industry.

Not saying that it's still not a lot of money, but these aren't your run-of-the-mill train operators and station agents that are easy to replace.

Ordinary railroad engineers don't make anything like $114,000 a year...

According to Salary.com. the median pay rate for a locomotive engineer is about $61,000 a year. And working for major railroads in this position means that unless you have incredible seniority, you are "on call," NOT scheduled for primarily shift work like the BART employees.

I'd guess that if they offered the current contract to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, (instead of the Amalgamated Transit Union who currently has the contract) Union Pacific and BNSF would have to scramble to keep freight trains in the Bay area running...because it's a MUCH better deal than "real" train crews get. Moreover, much more of the operations of trains is remotely automated than the typical freight or passenger train. BART was origianlly designed for entirely remote operation, with the "engineer" handling little more than door open-close and "clear to next signal."

And now according to http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/20...s20090815.aspx they won't be striking tomorrow...but who knows about the rest of the week...