You may recall that in recent months BART broached the topic of extending service by one hour, only on Fridays, and apparently even this extremely cautious but nevertheless welcome proposal has hit a bureaucratic snag. The current hemming and hawing comes from a study commissioned by BART which, surprise, declares that the trade-off in this proposal (BART said they would have to cancel their earliest Saturday morning train in order to make the late Friday train work) would unfairly impact minority and low-income train riders. You see, it's the more affluent folks who want to stay out all night drinking, and the poor folks who have early Saturday jobs still need to get to work.

The obvious question, of course, is why BART can't see its way around this problem and just add the extra trains at night without losing the early morning service. BUT NO! That is apparently too much to ask of this organization at this time. It has something to do with hours needed for track work. There's still a chance the BART board will vote to go ahead with the six-month test of the late-night Friday trains, but they will then have to prove that the benefits outweigh the negative impacts -- in other words, that there is more demand for the late-night trains than there is for the early morning ones.

So anyway, when it comes to food, S.F. may be the awesomest right now. But when it comes to public transportation that runs past elderly bedtimes, New York still has us beat.