Every few years, the Bay Area is reminded of just how important public transportation is when labor negotiations arise at Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART).
Negotiations between BART management and unions lead to the inevitable talks and worries about a strike, threatening to give the region's already clogged freeways a coronary.
In 2000, BART unions got much of what they had asked for, including a 24% raise over four years.
"And this was happening just as people in the Bay Area were ...