BART

Bay Area transit agencies are working with Metropolitan Transportation Commission on new maps and signs that focus on service frequency, using standardized colors, line styles, and labels to indicate how often a bus, train, or ferry arrives. These designs offer a clearer, standardized experience across service areas and county lines. No matter where you are going or how you get there, we all want to make it clear and easy. The new maps and signs will be presented next Monday to the MTC’s Regional Network Management Council. The public is invited to attend online or in person to learn about their installation later this fall at transit hubs in El Cerrito and Santa Rosa. The public feedback will help inform the next stage of the project, in which the new maps and wayfinding materials are expected to be installed at seven additional locations across the Bay Area in 2025 and 2026. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gA4ytGb6

The Transbay Tube turned 50 this week so we got riders a gift: We're bringing you inside the Tube for a look at some of the amazing infrastructure that gets hundreds of thousands of people where they need to go every single day. Watch the full video here: https://lnkd.in/gtzcyVY7

Happy Dreamforce! Don't forget, we are running longer trains during the #DF24 conference.

50 years ago today, the Transbay Tube opened for passenger service & captivated the public. To celebrate this anniversary, BART is honoring the one-of-a-kind structure with new videos, stories, and a big announcement: the seismic retrofit of the Transbay Tube is complete! Visit this link to read about the groundbreaking retrofit, take a look at the special science that keeps the Transbay Tube from rusting, and view a collection of archival images and ephemera from the BART archives. https://lnkd.in/gT5qkF-r

It is BART’s Birthday! And we got a great early gift yesterday: It was our busiest day since the pandemic started. Ridership has been on the rise lately and Tuesday we saw 195,296 riders! BART has more special days coming up. On Saturday we are giving our old paper tickets a send off. Students from around the Bay Area turned the tickets into high fashion. They will show off their looks 1 p.m. at Rockridge Station parking lot. And on Monday, the Transbay Tube turns 50! We launched an online trivia contest to help celebrate a half-century of service in the tube. The contest runs through Thursday: https://lnkd.in/gYujgE_k Stay tuned for more and keep riding.

We are publishing a series of explainer articles breaking down new data and analyses from BART's Role in the Region Report. Today's post looks at BART's impact on lowering the cost of living. BART connects people in the Bay Area to jobs, helping them save money on transportation costs. Our trips are cheaper than driving, and people who live near BART stations typically have lower transportation costs than those in other parts of the region. Read more here: https://t.co/S9RbeelH9g

We just had our highest ridership day since the start of the pandemic! BART ridership hit 194,274 (# of exits) on Wednesday. We have been seeing ridership bounce back recently with Back-to-School and busy weekends full of fun events. It’s evident people are taking BART for so many different reasons! Let’s take a dive into the numbers. First up: Civic Center. A week after finishing installation of our new fare gates at Civic Center Station we saw 700 more exits there yesterday compared to last Wednesday. No other downtown stations saw a bump. It’s too soon to tell, but there could certainly be a correlation. Coliseum Station had 2,700 more exits yesterday, the largest week over week gain, thanks to a concert at the Oakland Arena. Shout out to Future and Metro Boomin for giving ridership a boost! Get more information about our ridership trends here: https://bit.ly/4cWDVuO

When Sam Johnson sees someone lost in a BART station, they roll up their sleeve and show them a bicep. Etched five layers deep into the epidermis of Sam’s right arm is a tattoo of the BART System Map. It’s Sam’s first and only tattoo, and in a pinch, it comes in handy. It’s a practical tattoo but also a piece of art, an homage to the Bay, a love letter to transit. And let’s be honest, said Sam, “It looks good on me.” For Sam, it’s a way to “spread the gospel of transit.” They’d been thinking about the tattoo for awhile, and one day, they finally got the courage to walk into Black Sea Tattoo in Walnut Creek with a printout of the System Map. Tattoo artist Earl Pitt took care of the rest. “Everyone loves it and thinks it’s so fun,” they said. “People go, ‘Is that BART?’ They are so tickled.” And Sam is already thinking about the next one: “I’m thinking it will be a tattoo of a legacy train.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/g4dg7VjV

Civic Center Station is now fully outfitted with Next Generation Fare Gates! It is the first station in the system with multiple sets of the new gates. BART has successfully installed Next Generation Fare Gates at Civic Center, Fruitvale, and West Oakland stations. Work is expected to begin next week on the installation of new fare gates at two more stations: • 24th Street/Mission • Richmond BART will replace more than 700 fare gates at all 50 stations systemwide by the end of 2025. Funding for the new gates comes from local, state, and federal sources. We thank the San Francisco County Transportation Authority for providing $12.5 million to cover 50% of the 8 San Francisco County stations. Read more about the new fare gates here: https://lnkd.in/gGJDUg8V

BART is hitting the runway this upcoming Transit Month to give a final send-off to our retired paper tickets that were a portal to our system for more than a 1 billion trips in the decades since BART’s inception. We gave fashion design students from four local schools thousands of old paper tickets with one condition: transform them into high fashion.  The students from Academy of Art University, Oakland School for the Arts, City College of San Francisco, and San Francisco State University will strut their stuff and share their unique designs for a full-blown fashion show, “Project Doneway: A Farewell to BART Paper Tickets,” in the parking lot at Rockridge Station on Saturday, September 14,th from 1pm to 3pm.