BART’s Top 23 Accomplishments of 2023
By BART Communications
2023 has been a big year for BART as we laid the critical groundwork toward a new vision and a better future. It’s a future that features a cleaner, safer, easier-to-use BART that prioritizes all riders – and it’s right around the corner.
Here are 23 things BART is proud of this year.
We understood travel patterns were changing…so we changed with them.
1. BART listened to riders clamoring for more comprehensive service outside 9-to-5 work hours. We increased service during nights and weekends, where ridership is growing fastest. From weekend sporting events to evening concerts, BART is dedicated to being the safest, fastest, most reliable way to get where you need to go for fun.
We made historic updates to modernize our system.
2. We are now running exclusively new trains as part of the base schedule.
3. We migrated to 100% digital payments, eliminating paper ticket waste, and paving the way for our new state-of-the-art fare gates that will bolster ridership, revenue, and rider safety in 2024.
4. We rolled out the first gates to the public at West Oakland Station this week, ending the year with yet another upgrade to BART’s public safety infrastructure.
We doubled down on safety and cleaning.
5. We released our Safe & Clean Plan to show the progress we have made in making our system cleaner, safer, and more reliable.
6. Customer on-time performance is at 92%.
7. We doubled the police presence in the system, and we won awards for using unarmed Ambassadors and Crisis Intervention Specialists to increase staff presence in our system and help people in need.
8. We discontinued the disruptive fare inspections during the morning commute at Embarcadero Station and re-deployed the fare inspectors to ride trains and inspect Clipper cards at more stations.
9. We started running shorter trains to enhance safety because data shows without a doubt that active spaces are safer spaces.
10. We launched our “Let’s Talk About Us” campaign about domestic violence and Phase II of our Not One More Girl initiative addressing sexual harassment. We believe using art to change a culture of violence and building community partnerships to make BART safer is important.
11. We doubled the rate of deep cleaning train cars, and we increased the pressure washing of stations.
We made stations more welcoming.
12. We made it easier to pay for parking with the new Tap-and-Go feature on the Official BART Mobile App that allows customers to pay for parking with just one tap.
13. We reopened newly remodeled all-gender restrooms at Embarcadero and Downtown Berkeley stations. We now have six open underground restrooms. 345,000 people used these attended, clean, and safe restrooms in 2023.
14. We deployed a comprehensive strategy to clean up Civic Center, resulting in a dramatically improved station experience from previous years.
15. We now have ten brand-new escalators in downtown San Francisco and six new canopies along Market Street.
16. We’re increasing the discount for low-income riders from 20% to 50% with the Clipper START program beginning January 1, 2024.
We advanced our efforts to build housing on our property.
17. BART was proud to celebrate the openings of three transit-oriented development projects – Gateway at Millbrae Station, Waymark at Walnut Creek, and Kapuso Upper Yard at Balboa Park, creating over 1,100 new homes, including over 200 new affordable homes.
18. We advanced two additional projects by signing lease options with our selected developers at West Oakland and Phase I at Lake Merritt. These will bring nearly 1,200 new homes, including more than 400 affordable homes for riders who need them most.
We focused on responsible long-term planning to secure a thriving BART today and long into the future.
19. We delivered a balanced budget during the most difficult financial time in the history of American public transit. The Grants team secured nearly $400 million of funds in 2023 to help pay for improvements and reinvestment within the BART system.
20. We welcomed our new Inspector General and nearly tripled the office’s budget so it can expand and perform even more audits and investigations to identify waste, fraud, and abuse and ensure we are maximizing our efficiency.
21. And most impactful of all, we successfully advocated to get financial assistance from the state budget that immediately averted an impending fiscal cliff. BART stands to receive 45% of the region’s allocation and we will continue to build the case for long overdue investment.
We got to know our riders and celebrated transit with our biggest fans.
22. From our book club to new anime mascots, we activated our stations and trains with fun events to welcome people back to BART.
We also haven’t lost sight of the future.
23. The Link21 program was awarded $11.3 million in project development funds from the state, reaffirming the critical role of our efforts to build a second train crossing between Oakland and San Francisco in helping the State achieve their State Rail Plan vision for Northern California. Link21 launched its first 18-member, community-based Equity Advisory Council to advise program on priority population concerns, including anti-displacement, connectivity, access, and service needs.
BART remains the best and the safest way to travel the Bay Area.
We are proud of what we accomplished in 2023 – from investments in public safety, modernizing our trains and schedules, improving infrastructure, increasing equity, and working toward a secure fiscal future. But we know there’s always more to be done. We can’t wait to show riders what’s in store in 2024 and beyond as we continue driving our vision for the future of Bay Area public transit.
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