6. Standard-gauge is the way to go if your topography permits.
Are you claiming BART would have been better off with a narrower gauge than was actually used?
No, I'm saying don't use light rail where standard gauge rail works, because of the scalability advantage of standard gauge. I don't want to call it " heavy rail", because I know that there is a weird,yet official, definition of what constitutes light rail that can encompass what most people consider to be full size trains.
By the way, the'free' period has been pretty pernicious. They promised three months, so now the operators have painted themselves into a corner. It would have been better had they had, say, three days free period and then an indeterminate "reduced fare" period where they could have charged enough to keep the train from stranding people at the station, which creates the worst possible scenario: ticked off passengers, no revenues, no real idea as to where the demand lies. The strandings took place Saturday. One might think that this would be an indication that there is more weekend demand than expected and that perhaps service should be offered on Sunday. (The line held a photography contest and someone entered a picture of a bald eagle flying by the train). But most of the passengers were joy-riders, so who knows? To add insult to injury, some of the stranded passengers of course, were on the Albuquerque side of the line, where there was no free fare. Those fare-payers had the privilege of paying for a ticket and then getting left on the platform. Anyway, even if the system charged the Santa Fe passengers $2 a ticket, certainly a token amount, they would collect maybe half a million dollars during the three month trial run period. I figure the system burns maybe $4,000 of diesel a day, so they ought to at least try and recover that, even during the trial period.
On the plus side, the promoters evidently bought a reasonable amount of rolling stock, so they have a fair amount of latitude to adjust service.
Finally, a small matter, but the livery of the Railrunner (locomotive is the head of the roadrunner, cars, are the body and tail) is the best ever since the Santa Fe (the railroad, I mean) in War Bonnet livery. We have to look at it for the next fifty years, so I'm glad they paid a couple of bucks to have someone design something nice.