>Calling people from bay-area hacker spaces to give them a hand in creating something more modern.
Tragically, from the small amount of time I've spent in SF, my understanding is this is unlikely to be their first instinct, even if it's a great idea. Doesn't the SF local government have a testy, if not outright hostile relationship with the tech worker/hacker/startup scene?
I've met people from either side of the discussion who pretty much entirely blame the opposite group (hackers or city workers) for why SF is so different now than 'back in the day.'
This is perhaps more specious than the "cops don't want to do their jobs because people are just too mean to them" song and dance. At the risk of putting too fine a point on it BART is not run as part of any city government, San Francisco or otherwise. You're pretty much tilting at windmills here.
Besides this sort of thing is well beyond the scope of folks creating subscription based fruit juicers.
Gotcha. BART being funded by the Bay Area Rapid Transit District is something I'd forgotten, and does make my point a lot less salient. It's been a long time since I was in SF, so it's possible my assessments here are way off base.
The main observation I was trying to make is that the public/private sector has always seemed to have a harder time working hand-in-hand in the Bay Area than it does in other cities I've lived in, whatever that reason may be.
Tragically, from the small amount of time I've spent in SF, my understanding is this is unlikely to be their first instinct, even if it's a great idea. Doesn't the SF local government have a testy, if not outright hostile relationship with the tech worker/hacker/startup scene?
I've met people from either side of the discussion who pretty much entirely blame the opposite group (hackers or city workers) for why SF is so different now than 'back in the day.'