The Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission was created in 1970 to build a coordinated transit system for the Bay Area. As anyone who’s tried to use transit in the Bay Area knows well, it has failed completely. In a recently released paper, Seamless Bay Area’s Ian Griffiths explains the three main reasons why, and what can be about it: When it was created by an act of the California State Legislature in 1970, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission was intended by many to be a network manager – specifically to “integrate feeder bus and rail systems with the fledgling BART system,” according to MTC’s website. However, MTC is neither a state agency (such as the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, BCDC) nor a local jurisdiction (such as a county) so its legitimacy to carry out its mandate is largely dependent on the constituent nine counties that make up its governing structure.