BART

If you’re a frequent BART rider, chances are you’ve been in a situation where you need to exit a station shortly after entering it. Maybe you heard an announcement that BART is experiencing systemwide delays and you need to find another means of transportation. Maybe you just missed a train late at night, and instead of waiting 20 minutes, you decide to catch an Uber. Or maybe you forgot something at your home/work/car/etc. and need to run back out of the station to fetch the item. If this has happened to you, chances are you’ve been hit by BART’s Excursion Fare.

BART has launched a pilot project at 16th Street/Mission and Pleasant Hill stations of a new type of bike storage security device. They're called "Bike Keep" racks, but Streetsblog prefers to call them the "Green Machines."

The risks to our undocumented riders are real.

BART was ready. The city of Oakland was expecting 1.5 to 2 million people to pile into downtown this morning to celebrate the Warrior's NBA championship. Oakland is the geographic center of the BART system, so for most people it made sense to use BART for at least part of their trip in to the parade.

One errant motorist crashed into a telephone pole and paralyzed the Bay Area this morning at 8:30, right in time for peak rush hour crowds.

A couple of hundred officials, workers, and looky-loos braved the wind and cold rains and jammed the platforms of BART's new Warm Springs/South Fremont station for this morning's opening ceremony. Regular service begins tomorrow.

Life for commuters heading north from Warm Springs and South Fremont is about to get a little easier. After months of delay and glitches, it looks as if BART finally has its extension ready to roll. It announced the opening date, March 25.

From nine to nearly noon today, at BART headquarters in Oakland, the agency's Board of Directors and staff had an impassioned discussion about raising fares and parking fees to close projected budget deficits. "Across the country, ridership is down, from four to five percent for rail, and ten percent for buses," explained Grace Crunican, BART's General Manager. "Gas prices are very low and ride shares may be having our lunch."

Uber, Waymo and others are in the process of developing driverless car technology, while transit systems in the Bay Area continue to rely on one operator in the front of every single train.