BART and its Place in Bay Area Transit: A Student’s Review
Written by Kieran B. ‘27
BART, Bay Area Rapid Transit, has been a staple of Bay Area transit since 1974 when it finished opening. BART is a system of electric trains reaching the Bay Area and beyond. BART reaches from Richmond and Antioch in the north to North San Jose and Millbrae in the south. BART is overall a cheap and effective mode of transit. Despite this, problems lie deeper down.
BART is not profitable and “must now solve a $326M deficit before FY28” (Bart.gov) This lack of profit and money leads to further problems. BART cleans its trains, but despite this, the cars are often destroyed by trash and other waste.
BART has its own police force, BART police, which employs nearly 300 police members. Despite this, fairly extensive force rules are rarely enforced on trains and stations. People will often hop gates without paying or steal/break things in the station. BART also has significant problems with human excrement to such a degree that in the Dublin/Pleasanton station, they had to include “no public defecation” on a station sign!
One SJND student when asked about BART rules and security stated, “BART security is absolutely useless. They don’t enforce anything.”
One student, Brendon C, when asked about BART’s cleanliness stated, “Most of the time it varies. I know that they clean the trains on a regular basis and they get trashed on a regular basis as well. In the past they have historically been dirty.” BART’s cleaning has always been a task because of the large number of people that use it daily; to combat this, the trains are cleaned regularly. The one area that isn’t cleaned as regularly is the stations. At least one area of all the stations I’ve visited is filthy.
Richard Nixon when he rode BART in 1972 stated that it was “just like NASA.” BART is quite futuristic and has several advanced screens on the trains, but it isn’t always easy to see them because the brightness is sometimes quite low.
I have ridden BART since I was a little kid during preschool. Back in those days, it seemed so magical but now it seems subdued and dampened. The magic of BART has faded as I grew up and because it isn’t the same as it was those years ago. BART is still a functional service and is a staple for many in economic travel throughout the Bay Area.
In conclusion, BART is a staple of many in the Bay. Despite the fact that BART is far from perfect and has several structural problems, it is useful and BART won’t be going anywhere soon.
