Friday, Oct. 6 – This promises to be a busy weekend in the skies over the Bay Area as Fleet Week is back in San Francisco. BART is ready to help you get to the prime viewing locations for the air show.
BART is welcoming Fleet Week by offering longer and more frequent trains at night and on weekends throughout the festivities. This is the first Fleet Week that will benefit from BART’s reimagined schedule that was launched last month. Now riders will wait no more than 20 minutes on a station platform for a scheduled train. We are using only Fleet of the Future trains to fulfill our basic service plan so riders will enjoy a cleaner and safer BART experience. Many lines that have been served by 6-car trains will instead feature 8-car trains as we expand our capacity for riders going to Fleet Week.
Saturday, Oct. 7: California Golden Bears vs Oregon State University Beavers at Memorial Stadium
There’s a great matchup at Memorial Stadium Saturday as Cal hosts the 15th ranked Oregon State University Beavers. It’s the Bears’ Homecoming game so a big crowd is expected. Kickoff is at 7pm. The Bears need only three more wins to become bowl eligible. BART is the best way to get to the game. In addition to our increased weekend service and the longer trains we’re running for Fleet Week, we’ll stage an event train to expand our capacity for fans.
We hope you enjoy your weekend adventures aboard our trains. For an in-depth listing of local events, visit the BARTable website. You can also keep up with BARTable on Facebook and Instagram.
Enjoy the Mokelumne Trail Bridge Bike Ride from Antioch BART Station Plaza on Sept. 30
Friday, September 1, 2023, marked the official start of the Bay Area’s eighth-annual Transit Month. Hosted by San Francisco Transit Riders and Seamless Bay Area with support from local transit agencies, including BART, Transit Month toasts the many trains, buses, and ferries that connect the region and uplift its communities, economies, and cultures.
During Transit Month, riders are encouraged to explore the region by taking local transportation. The month is hallmarked by a multitude of free events, a Ride Contest, ride-a-longs with transit leaders, a Rider First Awards ceremony, and more.
Some of the BART-centric events to look forward to this year include:
Mokelumne Trail Bridge Bike Ride from Antioch BART Station Plaza on Sept. 30, organized by Bike East Bay
Ride with Bike East Bay to the new bike/walk bridge over Hwy 4 in deep east Contra Costa County. The bridge now provides a safer route between Antioch and Brentwood, including a connection to the Mokelumne Trail which continues to the east through Brentwood, and to the west through Pittsburg and Bay Point. On this ride we will explore the connection from the Antioch eBART station to the bridge, and then back along the Delta de Anza Trail.
Details: September 30, 2023 | 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Address: Antioch BART Station Plaza, 1600 Slatten Ranch Rd, Antioch, CA 94509
Meet the BART Anime Mascots on Sept. 16 Beat the Ridership Record All Aboard Bay Area Transit Day on Sept. 16 Transit CEO Ride-Along and Happy Hour on Sept. 29 BART Scavenger Hunt from Sept. 1 through 21, organized by Young Professionals in Transportation
Last year, riders logged more than 3,000 regional transit trips during the monthlong celebration, and we’re hoping to see even more rides logged this year!
“It’s no secret that the past few years have been hard on our transit, and though we scraped by a budget win recently, it’s not enough. That’s why we need to uplift transit all September long and highlight how necessary it is to keep our city equitable, equal, and fun,” said Thea Selby, Board Co-Chair of San Francisco Transit Riders, which created Transit Month. “It is more important than ever before that we show our elected leaders how important transit is to our city, and that we need to continue funding it. Let’s prove that to them this Transit Month by getting out and taking transit!”
Transit Month prizes are awarded to riders who log the most trips during the Ride Contest. But logging the most rides isn’t the only way to get a prize; this year, when a rider logs a trip, their name will be entered into a raffle.
“We’re expecting Transit Month to be bigger than ever before with more events, more participating agencies, and more community group involvement,” said Ian Griffiths, the co-founder and policy director of Seamless Bay Area, which co-hosts the monthlong celebration. “One of the things we’re most excited about is our community grant program, where we’re distributing 11 small community grants to get more groups involved.”
Transit Month prizes this year include lots of transit agency swag, as well as behind-the-scenes tours of sites not typically accessible to the public, like the Salesforce Transit Center.
The rider who logs the most BART trips this Transit Month will win an HO scale BART A car made by Rapido Trains (the model trains are currently available for preorder on railgoods.com). This museum-quality model will arrive inside a custom-made display case, allowing the rider to proudly show off their best-in-the-Bay Transit Month performance (Delivery is estimated Summer 2024). Other BART prizes up include a BARTable swag bag with promotional prizes, a poster-size BART map, and a BART anime mascot swag bag. Hear from last year’s BART Ride Contest winner below.
From Board of Directors President Janice Li and General Manager Bob Powers:
BART is thankful for the recent action taken by the California State Legislature to restore $2 billion for the Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program. The program is vital in funding transformative capital improvements to modernize public transportation systems such as BART.
The fate of transit operating budgets, however, presents a do-or-die decision point.
Each day BART moves closer to plunging off the fiscal cliff if the State does not provide short-term financial aid to fund transit operations.
One-time federal funds are dwindling even with BART’s stringent cost controls and will be exhausted by early 2025. If transit operations funding is not included in this year’s State budget, BART must begin making severe cuts to service and staffing, as early as this year. The State has the opportunity – and the power – to sustain BART or let BART and the Bay Area economy fail. Here’s how failure looks:
Trains only once an hour.
No trains on weekends.
No trains after 9 p.m. on weeknights.
Reduced service to San Francisco International and Oakland International airports.
Some stations closed.
Entire lines potentially shuttered
Those who will pay the biggest price for these severe cuts are those who can afford it the least. Sixty-seven percent of BART riders identify as non-white. Forty-four percent do not have a vehicle. Thirty-one percent have an income of $50,000 or lower. Seven percent are disabled. If the State fails to act, those who rely on BART as a lifeline will be stranded.
Everyone will pay the price if BART fails – even those who don’t use it. Traffic stands to drastically worsen across our already congested roadways and bridges, and regional greenhouse gas emissions will increase, further fueling climate change. Just one trip in a car emits the same amount of C02 as thirty trips taken on BART.
Businesses will struggle to move their goods with thousands more vehicles on already strained roads. BART service cuts to SFO and OAK will make tourism and convention travel unpalatable.
The Bay Area is an economic engine for the entire state, which represents the fourth largest economy in the world. But the regional economy isn’t ironclad. It needs effective public transit – BART, Muni, and other agencies – to thrive.
BART staff, labor partners and Board are focused on increasing ridership by improving the system.
Some highlights:
Adding eight to 18 additional police officers to patrol trains each shift in addition to BART’s unarmed safety staff of Ambassadors, Crisis Intervention Specialists and Fare Inspectors on trains.
A September schedule change means no rider will wait more than 20 minutes for a scheduled train, including nights and weekends.
More than doubling the Clipper START discount for eligible low-income riders.
A project to install 700 new fare gates at all stations by 2026 to deter fare evasion and increase safety.
Thorough cleaning of train car interiors twice as often.
Increasing the number of deep-clean teams by 66% to scrub heavily used stations.
These hard-earned gains for riders would be wiped out by severe service cuts. It’s a recipe for a death spiral.
If the State fails to act, not only will BART fail, but Bay Area public transit will fail. Ninety percent of all transfer trips in the Bay Area involve a connection to BART.
For BART and the Bay Area we know and love to survive, we need State help NOW.
A fire in the Antioch BART station parking lot destroyed six cars in Thursday, May 11, 2023. Photos: Con Fire
During possible attempted gas theft
By Allen D. Payton
According to the Contra Costa Fire Protection District (Con Fire), a fire in the Antioch BART parking lot on Thursday was extinguished after a total of six vehicles were extensively damaged. Con Fire crews, along with Antioch and BART police, responded. The fire appears to have been caused during an attempted gasoline theft. The incident remains under investigation.
San Francisco—BART riders and others who have stopped using the system or reduced their use dramatically say they would return in significant numbers if crime, safety and cleanliness issues are addressed, according to new polling released today by the Bay Area Council. Concerns about crime far outweigh remote work as the reason they are not riding. The findings offer an encouraging path forward for a system that is teetering on the brink of a fiscal cliff as BART ridership hovers at historic lows following the pandemic.
A Bay Area Council analysis of the poll findings suggests that by taking a much stronger and swifter approach to crime, safety and cleanliness, BART could see up to 300,000 more trips over the course of the workweek, pushing ridership above 50% of pre-pandemic levels.
Key Findings
79% say they feel more comfortable riding BART when there is a uniformed police officer or security present
73% say BART should prioritize adding more uniformed police on trains and in stations
62% say BART should improve fare gates to prevent fare evaders; 66% want fare gates to fully enclose station entrances
79% say BART should eject people from the system that violate the passenger code of conduct, which prohibits drugs, smoking, drinking and other illegal or unacceptable behavior
65% say BART should focus on core operations and leave social service issues to other public agencies
90% put high priority on more frequent cleaning
74% feel things in the Bay Area have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track
Riders and residents overall are crystal clear about what the main barriers are for them to returning to BART. Among all respondents, including those that never or rarely ride BART, 78% said they would ride BART more often if it was significantly cleaner and safer. This number is particularly striking when compared to the far fewer 46% of respondents who stated they would ride BART more often if they had to commute to work or school more frequently.
There is similar enthusiasm for returning to BART among the 37% of respondents who were regular BART riders before the pandemic but have since dramatically curtailed their use of the system or dropped off completely. These riders may represent BART’s best opportunity to bring more riders back to the system more regularly, with 59% saying they would ride BART a lot more often with safety and cleanliness improvements. But they also generally harbor much stronger levels of dissatisfaction with the system than others who are not BART riders.
“There can be no higher priority for BART and the future survival of the system than to direct every ounce of energy and resources into making the system safer and cleaner,” said Jim Wunderman, President and CEO of the Bay Area Council, which was instrumental in the creation of BART in the 1950s and has long been a champion for the system. “We specifically call on BART to immediately and significantly increase police and security personnel on trains, vigorously enforce the rider code of conduct, and install new fare gates within a year. BART must treat this like a crisis, because it is a crisis. BART is the mass transit backbone of our region and there’s too much at stake for BART and our region not to be more aggressive in addressing the reasons legions of riders are staying away. BART deserves credit for recent moves to increase police presence and ramp up cleaning, but riders and others are saying they must do more and they must do it now.”
The concerns about safety and cleanliness are reflected in overall sour views of the system, with 49% giving BART an unfavorable rating compared to 30% for SF MUNI, 23% for AC Transit and 15% for Caltrain. The poll by EMC Research surveyed 1,000 residents in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco and northern San Mateo counties encompassing BART’s service area. The poll has a margin of error of +/-3.1 percentage points.
Having a more visible police presence across the system is critical to bringing riders back. A vast majority of all those surveyed say they want more police officers on trains and in stations, they want more frequent cleaning of train cars and stations, and they want BART to strictly enforce an existing code of rider conduct which outlaws gate-hopping fare cheats, drinking and smoking, drug use and other illegal and dangerous behaviors.
These attitudes shouldn’t come as a big surprise. According to the poll, 53% of residents know of someone who has been a victim of crime on BART, 46% say they have witnessed crime on BART, and 18% say they personally have been a victim on crime on BART. Meanwhile, 44% of BART riders said they have never or rarely seen a police officer.
The overnight closure of State Route 4 between Lone Tree Way and Sand Creek Road in Brentwood originally planned for Friday, May 5 through Saturday, May 6, 2023 has been postponed one week to Friday, May 12 through Saturday, May 13, 2023.
In partnership with the City of Brentwood, the Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA) is constructing the Mokelumne Trail Bicycle and Pedestrian Overcrossing to provide safe access to cyclists and pedestrians for commuting and recreational travel, reconnecting two sides of the trail that were separated by the expansion of State Route 4.
When completed, the overcrossing will provide access to the future East County Intermodal Transit Center and BART Station in Brentwood, as well. It is part of the larger Mokelumne Coast to Crest Trail which also includes the Delta de Anza Regional Trail that runs through Antioch and Oakley, that will, when completed, connect six counties across California from the East Bay to the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
The overnight closure will facilitate final adjustments to the falsework as part of the construction work installing the pedestrian and bicyclist crossing over State Route 4. This closure will impact State Route 4 in both the Eastbound and Westbound directions. CCTA and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) have scheduled the closure during the early morning hours in order to minimize impacts to the motoring public.
In order to ensure crew and public safety during the planned construction work, a temporary nighttime freeway closure in both directions of State Route 4 will occur in both Eastbound and Westbound lanes of Highway 4 from midnight on Friday, May 12 until 6:00am on Saturday, May 13, 2023 (weather permitting).
Detours Detours will be in place to reroute drivers around the closure and are planned as follows: Eastbound traffic will be directed to exit at Lone Tree Way, go eastbound to Shady Willow Lane, then southbound on Shady Willow Lane to Sand Creek Road, before proceeding westbound on Sand Creek Road to the eastbound State Route 4 on-ramp.
Westbound drivers having to detour will exit on Sand Creek Road and go eastbound on Sand Creek Road to Shady Willow Lane, then northbound on Shady Willow Lane to Lone Tree Way, and proceed westbound on Lone Tree Way to the westbound State Route 4 on-ramp.
Future Freeway Closures
Additional overnight closures will be needed over the course of the next eight weeks (weather dependent) to facilitate concrete pours for the stem and soffit and deck of the future Mokelumne Trail Bicycle and Pedestrian Overcrossing. Additional information regarding dates and detours will be provided once the schedule is confirmed. This project is anticipated to be complete in late summer or early fall of 2023.
BART is moving forward with a historic purchase of brand-new fare gates to be installed systemwide as part of its latest effort to win riders back and overhaul safety in the system. The new fare gates will bring a new look and improved experience, offering state-of-the-art technology that will boost safety by reducing fare evasion, enhancing access for people in wheelchairs and those who bring bikes and strollers on BART, and optimizing the reliability and maintenance needs of the fare gates.
At the March 23, 2023, BART Board of Directors meeting, staff recommended the Board move forward with the first purchase of the $90 million Next Generation Fare Gate project. Staff recommended awarding up to $47 million to STraffic America to implement the project. BART staff will develop an installation timeline with STraffic and will stress-test the new fare gate design at a yet-to-be-determined station later this year. The project calls for all stations to have new fare gates by 2026.
“We want to deter fare evasion, modernize our aesthetic and reduce maintenance,” explained Sylvia Lamb, BART’s assistant general manager of infrastructure delivery, at Thursday’s BART Board of Directors meeting.
The transit agency’s board of directors received an update Thursday on the fare-reliant agency’s long quest to implement new gates that prove harder to jump and prove more reliable.
“There’s an appetite out there to go ahead and get this thing done,” said Bob Powers, BART’s general manager, adding the agency will soon be on a “path that’s going to get us to a systemwide replacement very, very quickly.”
Source: STraffic
Thursday’s presentation was informational only. At the second presentation, to be made on April 13, BART directors will seek the board’s approval for the $47 million fare gate contract.
“This is a very happy day, and I can’t wait to vote next month,” said BART Director Bevan Dufty.
To inform the endeavor, BART built and installed prototypes that it deployed in several stations in its system beginning in 2020, particularly around elevators, in an effort to make it easier for elevator users to tag in and out of the system. It has also retrofitted some of the older gates in an attempt to make them more resistant to fare evasion.
The agency has estimated that fare evasion could cost as much as $15-25 million in lost revenue every year, although the exact figure is difficult to pin down.
The new fare gates will look unlike any other of the current 700 fare gates in the BART system. While the new design has not yet been finalized, the gates will have clear swing barriers that will be very difficult to be pushed through, jumped over, or maneuvered under.
The next generation fare gates will not have the orange fins riders have become accustomed to. They will also be different than the new swing-style fare gates designed by BART staff and recently installed to enclose elevators into the paid area.
The new gates will be able to handle large crowds without slowing people down as they move in and out of stations while processing their Clipper cards. The gates will have advanced 3D sensors that are able to detect if someone is in a wheelchair or has a bike, stroller, or luggage with them, allowing for more time before the swing barrier closes. The gates will have LED lighting on the swing barriers and the pathway through the gate to help visually impaired riders. STraffic has worked extensively with members of the ADA community and is committed to continue this work while designing the BART gates.
“New fare gates will transform the rider experience and will deliver immediate improvements to safety and reliability,” said BART Board President Janice Li. “BART researched world-wide best practices in fare gate designs to help guide this pivotal purchase. I want to thank the local, state, and federal funding sources who have stepped up to support this impactful project. I am committed to seeing this project fully funded and fully implemented without delay.”
To date, BART has secured $73 million of the $90 million project, with funding from:
BART Funds (Operating-to-Capital Allocations and Measure RR) $23M
County Transportation Agency Funds $28M
Federal Funds $15M
State Funds $6.5M
In recommending the vendor, BART staff evaluated proposals from industry leaders and scored each proposal on their technical approach, qualifications, experience in delivering similar projects, and price. STraffic America, LLC offered the best value to BART and committed to subcontracting 11% of the work to Disadvantage Business Enterprises.
BART’s next major track improvement project will focus on a portion of the Yellow Line. On five non-consecutive weekends in April, May, and June workers will replace an interlocking between Rockridge and Orinda stations. Interlockings allow BART to safely move trains from line to line and are an essential part of the system. Free buses will replace train service between Rockridge and Orinda stations on all five weekends.
The weekend dates for this project are April 1-2, April 15-16, May 13-14, May 27-29 (Memorial Day weekend), and June 10-11. Riders can expect delays of 30 minutes in the work area on shutdown weekends.
Yellow Line trains will run every 30 minutes on shutdown weekends. On each night of the weekend shutdowns the last scheduled departure from Antioch to Orinda that normally leaves at 11:44pm will be cancelled. Riders traveling westbound from Antioch must catch the earlier train at 11:14pm each night.
The equipment being replaced is decades old and has outlived its design life. Riders will enjoy a smoother, safer, more reliable, and quieter ride once the projects are complete. The Yellow Line is the busiest in the BART system.
This upcoming work is part of BART’s overall effort to improve the safety and reliability of the 131-mile, 50 station system. There are now more rebuilding projects happening across BART than at any point in its 50-year history. You can learn more about the progress of this work by reading the 2022 Measure RR Annual Report published by the independent Measure RR Bond Oversight Committee.
You can keep up with the latest updates for trackway repair projects that impact service by going to our Alerts and Advisories page. BART’s Trip Planner has been improved to show the full customer journey including bus bridges.
Learn more about the work happening between Rockridge and Orinda stations on our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page and Fact Sheet for the project.
