This approach, I believe, would have made a current serious and growing problem more unlikely, in time,
this approach could be extended in scope and depth and stop the growing problem we that is mushrooming in the San Francisco Bay Area rapid transit system (BART).
First, let me state at the beginning I think BART is terrific, there are better systems now but they did not exist when it was build, some 30 years ago.

The Problem, Part I.
I follow the news on BART but was surprised to learn they had hearings, a few weeks ago, on building an extension from a nearby station to the Oakland Airport.
I am familiar with the local bus line (Tri-Delta Transit) and they have hearings on route and fare changes a few months before they are implemented and this time they said that they had to cut service and fire bus drivers.
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At the BART Meeting the plan to finance the new Airport Connector would be financed from internal funds and a loan for $150 Million. There was no mention of benefits and others said that the current bus, AirBART, takes only about 7 minutes. I have used this bus about 10 times and the estimate seemed reasonable. How much time could be cut from 7 minutes that justify a total cost of $400 Million?

Can you imagine the response if this information had been available to the public before the meeting?
Also, in a negative sense, there was no mention of projected traffic at the airport, it took me a few minutes to find the data that shows a continuous decline in traffic at the Airport for the last few years. The trend does not oscillate, at all, it looks like an straight line decline.
Also, I learn that Oakland Airport lost two-thirds of its traffic in this period, an straight line extrapolation would intercept the zero traffic line in a couple of years.

I spoke at the meeting in favor of using that money to support the bus lines that bring workers to BART and used the parallel between large airplanes that need traffic from many places to fill enough seats to be profitable.
I tried to explain that BART depends on local bus lines for the same reason, but I expected them to know that already from planning studies of the Airport Connector.

The meeting was filled to capacity and they decided to have a second meeting a week later. I went to that one too and they had more than twice as many present. The speaker list reached over 90, many supporting other bus lines.
There was no mention on whether the funds could be used in such a different matter.

A week later, the BART Board of Directors approved building the connector disregarding the views of about 80 Percent of the speakers. One, a Minister, said that to disregard the urgent needs in Oakland to reduce a trip by a couple of minutes was “Wasteful and Immoral”.

Today, BART announced a plan to increase in fares by 6.1%, a trip from Bay Point, where I live, to SFO Airport would go from $8 to $10.40 and other increases are planned.
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Why are they doing this?
A. Did someone made “a proposal they could not refuse”?. Last year, the BART Directors changed their rules and made it legal, for the first time, for Directors to accept contributions from Private Contractors.
B. They never mentioned the traffic at the Airport and its constant decline in recent years. They never mentioned the risks, for example, American Airlines left, could more airlines leave?
The “Hub and Spoke” traffic centered in SFO is driven by the biggest long range passenger airplanes that depend on feeder traffic probably more than local traffic. The Aerospatiale 380 airplane carries over 500 passengers and serves SFO, it will never land in Oakland.
Its first flight to SFO by the French A380 was on the 2007 Anniversary date of Sputnik I (4 Oct 1957).

The real reason I like your plan to promote “transparency, participation, and collaboration” is that in recent months I became aware of other organizations, private and public, that are acting in a self-defeating manner. In time, if enough organizations self-destroyed, the consequences would add to the Recession but, these problems will not be solved by “bailing out” BART, where the Average salary was over $100,000 a year and they have a choke hold on the entire commerce in San Francisco, therefore, the Bay Area. In the last strike, politicians competed with each other to give them everything to end the strike. One rule the passed was to exclude Management personnel from driving the BART trains. Yet, BART was originally designed to be automated. Curiously, the Airport Connector is said to be “automated” too, but nobody expects that to be the case.
Can you imagine replacing a bus driver, possibly earning like a Tri-Delta bus driver in Bay Point, with a Conductor that gets paid many times his, or her, salary?
Your plan is a courageous First Step with a clear path to address the other problems.