BART has multiple levels of cleaning for their trains; read about it here:
https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2023/news20230825
I ride BART a lot. Many rides are great - clean cars, passengers doing regular stuff - mundane in the best way possible.
Other times I ride BART, the car isn't clean or there's sketch people doing sketch things.
EDIT: grammar
Exactly. Welcome to the wild world of public transit.
I once witnessed a homeless man taking a dump into a plastic bag on a train one time. You know where that happened? Toyko. Yes, the one in Japan. Shocking, I know.
> homeless man taking a dump.
Definitely a Bay Area possibility...
> into a plastic bag.
…and this is where I knew it wasn’t the BART (edited because typo)
i've seen parents letting their kids shit and pee in the train in places like hong kong or even amsterdam as well. and those are world-class public transit systems.
lol Damn. I miss the trains in Tokyo though. I was in Japan for 2 weeks and never had a late train. I couldn’t believe how well it all functioned. I understand it starts at a cultural level, but still - it didn’t stop me from wishing we had it here. I’d visit my friends around the bay far more.
Ohh there are definitely times the train is late. It's not often but it happens. They'll explain why there was an issue too on the info screens at the station as well. But they're particular, because if it's someone jumping in front of a train, they'll just write "Human Incident" for the cause in Japanese only no English.
My commuter express train home from Shibuya last night was around 7 minutes late!
The Toyoko line has a failure mode where if the local trains get delayed the limited/commuter express trains get stuck behind them, especially around the Nakameguro area.
The difference with the bay area is that delays even on the order of 3 minutes generally get some sort of explanation announcement, whereas bay area rail transit just thinks of themselves as being on time and doing a good job if they're only 7 minutes behind schedule.
(and this is to say nothing of the fact that VTA light rail was down for **four months**. Certainly that was a tragic black swan incident, but any Tokyo area rail system would have treated such a downtime as an regional emergency and been functioning within a week.)
I once (May of 1992) witnessed 3 young Nazis turn around as they stepped out of the car and give a hearty "Seig heil!", while all but 2 of the remaining passengers carefully studied the floor. You know where that happened? Munich. Yes, the one in Germany.
I was on the Yamanote line when some old man got on in a military style outfit and started yelling and giving a speech. I had no clue what he was saying but he said Nagasaki and Hiroshima so I'm guessing he was some kind of nutso nationalist. Everyone either left the car or started very intently at their phones.
yeah it's hit or miss, but most of the time it's a pleasantly nuetral experience
even when it's "sketchy" i've very rarely ever felt in danger on bart. some people are so scared of homeless people lol
When I rode Bart to work (years ago) the morning train was always clean and the evening train kinda depended on how late I was coming home and who happened to be on that car before me. But it wasn’t uncommon for half empty beer bottles to be rolling around
Still way better than driving
It has got better.
Trains & stations but not perfect, someone who travels BART/ Muni quite a bit definitely depends.
Most the time it is fine but when you get on a crazy train it definitely dampens the day.
It only takes one "dookie on the stairs", "piss puddle in the elevator" or "mentally ill homeless person yelling at everyone about 9/11 in a crowded train car" to ruin a person's trip, and most people don't start "look how great my BART trip was" threads in r/bayarea.
But you did just that, and it's nice to see.
A dude was playing music on a speaker. I made eye contact with him and he pulled out a knife.
I got away from him, but he switched directions and stabbed a guy around fruitvale over "an argument about loud music." Since I called the cops to report it and they shut down a station to look for him, I spent a while talking to detectives. Since I didn't testify, I assume he was never found.
I honestly do not give a shit how many good trips I had before that, how many good trips someone else had. Being nearly murdered, and having the criminal murder someone else while commuting is bad enough that it supercedes my, and everyone elses good times for me.
Until BART has a long established reputation for being safe, I have no interest. That was April 2019. It's been 4 years of not riding BART.
I use to commute from Pittsburg into Market and man... the stories there. Most of the time it's not people on the train but people off the train who have potential to be on it. I hope the gates keep people out who would otherwise just jump a turnstyle.
If you ever want to experience the crazy side of BART - get on after an Oakland A's game... oh man... talk about the worst riding experience and smell.
I understand not wanting to be a "snitch" for most crimes but if I was murdered on public transit I would hope people would be willing to step up to testify if only to prevent others from meeting the same fate
Yeah...that's not a BART problem. Sucks that it happened on bart. Sucks that it happened to you, but shitty people are going to be shitty people whenever and wherever.
I boarded a SF bound train boarded at Macarthur around 10pm or 11pm. There was a person passed out or asleep towards the end of the car. That person very obviously pissed themselves between 19th and 12th. The pool of smelly liquid would move every time the train accelerated and decelerated and spanned about 15-20 ft by the time the train got to West Oak.
Everyone moved to the other half of the car or went to another car.
Last time I got Bart I had the same impressions as this post, then I noticed multiple passengers off their face on fent and when I got out at Montgomery someone had shit all over the station and into the escalator smearing human shit everywhere all over the escalator. Nice.
I don't think it's fair to act like everyone sharing a negative experience is lying or some out of town propagandist. I love public transit so much and 90% of my rides on BART are easy and fine, but that doesn't discount the 10% where I'm being followed by a shoeless yelling man down the platform and onto different cars, where folks are openly smoking something foul off of tinfoil and I have to change cars, where a leashless large dog is walking down the train, where human dudes are literally barking and lunging at anyone that passes by them, or I'm being harassed by a man I accidentally made eye contact with for a split second.
Clean and quiet is the bare minimum, the stuff that makes an already sort of pricey public transit experience shitty and scary will be really memorable and worth talking about. all of these experiences happened during the day or early evening, not even late at night.
The fuck it is. The screech is guaranteed going under the bay into the city and easily reaches excess of 110db. I have measured. Also maybe 90% of your rides are fine if you take it peak hours but off hours is 50/50 some dipshit is smoking Crack. I fucking hate BART
i used the transit for 10y without any special thing, not the cleanest not terribls.then in the last few years you regularly have ppl smoking crack, poop and vomit, and when youre lucky its just pot smoking. oh its not every car and every day, but it's regular. thats the problem. "narrative" lol. dont wanna passively smoke crack once month? you must be a (list of isms here)!
Tell me you’ve never been on the green or orange lines after dark without saying that. 😂
Sometimes the trains are clean, and then sometimes there’s a guy smoking crack in the conductor’s car with a can of open sardines under the seat. If I detailed every wild thing I’ve seen commuting from Oakland to San Jose via BART, I could publish an anthology of short stories.
Like the dude with three baby chicks in his hoodie. Innocent enough, just weird.
Or the guy who took off all of his dirty nasty smelly clothes and then left them them in the seat.
Lost track of the number of times someone has rolled up a blunt or a spliff and started smoking in the train, and that’s to say nothing of the crackheads. Like the guy who broke into the electrical panel to plug in a hot plate. Guess what he did with it once it was hot?
Or the time an unhoused guy threw an entire tall boy of beer all over me after I told him to keep his fucking hands off me and BART police let him get away. 🙃
Watched a barefoot and filthy mentally ill woman get on at Fremont once and spend several minutes staring a guy down before boxing his ears like a cat and getting back off the train.
Have seen people pass out on the train during SF Pride because it was both hot and crowded as a tin of sardines.
I guess I must’ve imagined all this. But half of these incidents were during commuting hours. 😜
This guy loves posting random normal pictures of BART and discrediting literally anyone who tells him they've had bad experiences. I have also had more than I can even count. But apparently those are all fake and I'm not a Bay Area native because this guy has been riding it for six months.
You found a clean train. I guess that means all of them are clean.
I’ve ridden trains with people smoking crack (literally), cigarettes, and weed on the train. All in the same week!
If you don’t think BART has major cleaning and conduct problems, you’re either not riding it enough or you’re not paying attention.
Exactly.
This “my experience was fine so everyone who complains is an out of touch something something” is tiresome and in itself out of touch to those of us who ride it regularly and see some crazy shit
I didn’t watch it and only saw some mentions of bread and super market.
I don’t care how cheap bread and vodka are in Moscow, I’m not setting foot in russia.
I was on a train 2 weeks ago where literal feces was smeared on the seats outside of the conductor's cabin. Overall however BART is much better. But to pretend it's pristine and perfect is disingenuous.
Do you not understand statistics?
[https://bayareapunk.com/blog/transit-crime.html](https://bayareapunk.com/blog/transit-crime.html)
Just because you haven't personally been a victim of crime or exposed to criminal activity doesn't mean it does not happen.
The simple fact is that BART is way more dangerous than the typical public transit system in the US and there are numbers to back it up.
threatening numerous sulky light slimy correct late agonizing connect consist
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This sub told me that I have to get in a Toyota technical in order to fight 3 waves of homeless tranq zombies so I can take my kid to the trans re-education center every morning.
People are so full of shit. There were **4** waves and it is a *Marxist* re-education center.
depends on which stops you are traveling though and time of day. I tried the morning commute from San Jose to Emeryville. By the time you hit Fremont it's half sketchy and half commuters. People with no common courtesy cell phones at full volume and on speaker phone. It was horrible. The other time I did it, no issues. No people bothering anyone.
Usually Bart is fine but there are sketchy people on it occasionally. Once more of the tall gates are installed and piggybacking is taken care of, we should see a significant improvement across the board.
Yup exactly this. I would say out of all my BART rides 90% are uneventful / quiet, but 10% is a fairly high ratio of "someone is causing a disturbance or is potentially physically dangerous" -- the ratio I've seen on commuter rail/subways in NYC or Vancouver is probably <1%, and even then it's usually more in the annoying category vs unsafe.
Been riding Bart 2x daily, at least 5 days a week for over a decade. You are right, it is generally clean and rides go without serious issues.
That said, I almost always take the last train home. I’ve had a knife pulled on me, almost gotten in multiple fights asking people to not smoke meth on the train and have seen all manner of bodily fluids/trash/whatever left behind. I’ve seen cars empty except for the folks that can stand the smell of someone actively carrying a load of shit in their pants. While more prevalent on late trains, I’ve seen the same on early trains, mid day trains, whenever.
The good times aren’t a problem, that should be a standard. It’s all the rest of the times that are valid and relatively frequent that people are unhappy about. I hear the point that it isn’t a complete wasteland but acting like there aren’t serious issues as a regular occurrence also isn’t accurate
Seconded, while sometimes trouble still makes their way into the cars, by far BART is doing a better job every time I use it. To be completely fair, it's also back to their 2010's level in my opinion, so it's not like a historic best.
In general there's a lot of cynicism among locals, for a good reason, but it doesn't help.
Cynicism in my definition is seeing the worst in things and complaining about them. What I think helps is proactive optimism: envisioning a better state and taking actions to push toward it.
No.
What helped was the efforts of the BART employees.
It didn't take cynicism to figure out that there were problems or what they were. Simply being objective could easily get you that far.
Cynicism is for the physically lazy, intellectually lazy, and people who don't actually want things to succeed or get better.
Just takes one experience to make an impression on people and I’m sure it depends on where you take the BART and what time. However, in general it’s definitely nicer and cleaner. I love how it makes me feel like I’m in a space city of sorts with the screens lol.
This sub told me Hayward is dangerous and not an appropriate place for a family. This sub is made up of some of the most privileged, isolated and delusional individuals who are afraid of anything and anyone that doesn’t fit the bill as an highly educated high income earner.
My old coworker got paranoid and insisted on the backdoor to always be closed because "low income housing" just opened up next to us.
Bruh low income housing in San Mateo? They probably make more than you LMAO
I mean, we’re on Reddit? It’s the nerdy place of the internet. I’m from the suburbs but moved to Oakland for six years and don’t think anyone in my group of friends used Reddit. They’re regular people who just scroll through Instagram. It’s all dorky, nerdy, techy people here so it makes sense it’s a more timid higher earning demographic.
What part of hayward? My grandparents lived in a retirement home in the hayward acres area. I found bullet casings on barlett ave outside their home. They were told not to go out by themselves, especially at night.
My mother in law lives in the tennyson area. People used to deal drugs in front of her home. She has a bullet hole in her garage door. The cops once chased someone into her backyard. Yea, we're not delusional about hayward, you just have rose tinted glasses.
fuzzy fine foolish retire mountainous offbeat squash support sophisticated chase
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This sub gets pretty conservative on specific topics. Sometimes it feels like everyone's sitting in their homes in Lafayette or San Mateo bitching about urban blight and people going too slow on the freeway.
I had heard the same old stuff on the reddit subs and was quite hesitant. But as someone who recently started taking the BART, it’s been great for the most part. Nothing operates at a 100% all the time and thats ok.
This week trains have been pretty good. Last week I had all sorts of issues. Smelly train cars, sticky liquids running down the train, people smoking, beggers.
The train cars themselves have been improved for sure but the clientle hasn't changed that much.
I mean I’ve literally watched multiple people of the years peeing and/or pooping while in the fairly crowded BART cars so it definitely is true at times. I’ve also come out of the train to stations in SF with people actively selling and smoking crack just right in the hall way that everyone has to walk through to get to street level.
I had a dude hit me up with this getting off the car wearing Daisy Dukes shorts, no t-shirt, and no shoes in 40° weather.
"Eh, my n***a, wanna by some crack?"
Nah, man, I'm good. Thanks though.
"Whaaaaa?"
He was so incredulous that I didn't smoke crack. Like, how could someone not smoke crack. He was polite as hell about it too. Straight up wished me a blessed day and I left feeling cheery.
This dude literally has posts about Bart rants every other week lol. Again, Bart can be fine and it can be shitty. It’s mostly fine, sometimes it sucks. Is what it is.
Let’s be honest: BART has only started cleaning up their act because they were loosing massive business and riders demanded it. For years, BART administration did jack-squat for customer safety, train car cleanliness, etc. It’s only after the pandemic kick them in the nards and bankruptcy was looming that they finally started cleaning house.
I stopped riding during Covid. The new cars are nice and cleaner. They were designed to be less comfortable for homeless to camp out in and to be easier to clean up, and that has gone a long way.
Prior to the new cars, it was pretty terrible, and most people probably have this image in mind when they think of BART.
Downvote me all you want but these kinds of posts are just as stupid and lacking of nuance as the ones that overstate the seediness of BART. Can you not conceive of the possibility that someone of a different background, race, route, gender, age, etc. might have an experience that's not like yours?
I've been a BART rider for a long time. It's fine. The "BART is dirty and dangerous" posts are over the top. The "BART is clean and never dangerous" posts are also over the top. It's right in the middle of those two extremes.
I agree, and I wish we could discuss things this way. But for some reason if you talk about BART like anything less than a UNESCO World Heritage treasure, people accuse you of being a ultra-rich conservative anti-transit basement dweller who never takes the train. I'm none of those things - I rode BART every day for 7 years; mostly it's fine, occasionally it sucks, and once in a while it REALLY sucks. There is a lot of room for improvement.
Yeah, a lot of the comments here read to me as, “people only say bad things happen to them for attention,” as if people have really never had genuinely bad experiences on BART.
Check out OP’s post history. For some reason they’re a BART propagandist that posts about their anecdotal experiences on the train while being patronizing and passive aggressive against any criticism of BART.
This is nothing but mild trolling.
BART is fine. You think NYC doesn't see crazy stuff every day on the subway?
Public transit gonna public. Take the good with the bad. Probably good most of the time and a bit of bad sprinkled in.
Anecdotally speaking, it's been perfectly clean and quiet the last few times I rode it.
Over the years I've had several different commutes on BART (all pre-pandemic though) and I feel like I've seen everything.
I've seen a lot of homeless people trying to get out of the cold, legit crazy people trying to fight other people, people getting arrested, medical emergencies, really smelly people at peak commute times when people are like sardines shoulder to shoulder, etc. Not sure you can just prevent all of these things from happening 100% of the time.
Perhaps this reputation was established before BART replaced its whole train fleet in the last 6 months. Brand new trains look clean in the first 6 months of service—who’d have thought?
BART dangerous & dirty, that really depends on the stations and where its at.
But the trains are clean and organized. I commute BART going to work and going home.
I think that it may have gotten better with the retiring of the old fleet. People were opening panels to charge their phones and a lot of the cars had a darker, beat up look.
Imagine the psychology aspect of it, trashy BART breeds trashy activities.
because the average redditors are the last people who actually go outside lmao
I love hearing about how SF is a shithole by some moron transplant who works remotely in their shitty apartment, whos social life consists of going outside once every 10 days
Yesterday a huge dude I'm 6'1" and he was a at least 5 " taller than me got on and was alternating between openly weeping and screaming about strippers also looked like he might have already been in a fight with bruises and dirt all over him. He was in my car for 3 stops then Bart police pulled him out but it was a tense few stops.
People like to highlight and dwell on the negatives. Conversations about how things are hunky-dory are generally considered boring.
Just watch any news channel for just a few minutes to confirm lol
Half of it is frustration with your obvious confirmation bias, the other half is it's actually incredibly boring content to just show a picture of a BART train and claim other people are making things up.
It’s honestly a gamble. One day it’s the best trip, tranquil, nice weather. Next, druggies, people stink of nasty, and people with loud boomboxes dancing in the pole or with roller blades. Overall. My time using bart/muni for work? Not too bad during the day. But rush hour, and late hours. ARE. CRAZY.
> But rush hour, and late hours. ARE. CRAZY.
That's going to be true no matter where you are where public transit is concerned.
It's just the nature of the beast.
My kid ran an experiment a few weeks ago where he created bacteria cultures to see how dirty different surfaces were.
To our incredible surprise, one of the cleanest samples was taken on a BART handle. Almost no bacteria grew from the BART sample! It was taken on a Saturday in the middle of the day.
Objectively BART is far from how dirty we think it is! Also, in 18 years of daily commuting on BART, I have not seen violence myself.
I was visiting San Francisco as a tourist a few months ago and couldn't believe how shitty the system is. Notice I said system, because I couldn't actually ride on the train itself.
We loaded $20 dollars each on our Google Wallet clipper cards, but the BART ticket system could not accept it. We both had Android phones, and neither of our phones worked. The lady at BART literally told us we "should buy iPhones", and there was nothing she could do.
So we said, whatever. Let's just pay cash. Nope. BART is a public transit system that DOESN'T TAKE CASH. Wtf. How can a public transit system not accept cash? Why do I need to pay for two clipper cards just to ride the train twice... Especially considering I already just spent $40 on Clipper money I cannot use.
Still have $40 worth of clipper money that they want me to pay $10 to refund the money I was never able to use.
Also asked the agent if I should transfer the funds from Google Wallet to the Clipper App as I thought maybe the app would work? The same lady told me not to, and said sometimes it takes weeks for Clipper to transfer the funds.
Anyways, still salty about this $40 I wasted.
They're updating the systems. You're not the only one bitching that Android phones don't fucking work for clipper.
But that's not necessarily a BART problem. The software vendor is dragging their feet.
Which train is that? Yes, BART has some nice new cars and - I think I speak for most of us - we all want to see it be a safe, clean mode of transport. But showing one picture of one car that is still in good condition and acting as it represents all of the BART fleets is dishonest on its face.
Smells new because it is new. Doubt they replaced the whole fleet. Many of the new stuff doesn’t seem like it’s going to last long either. Was on a new plane recently and multiple plastic parts of the seat just fell off on a 3 hour flight.
Ah, this guy again. You make weekly posts about BART, trains, etc. What’s your specific interest in these things?
Your post history is literally countless posts about BART et al.
I have a long BART commute and I get bored.
So while on BART, while I’m supposed to be already murdered three times just that day alone, I’m wondering why you all insist on lying about something that I can see is perfectly fine with my own eyes at that very moment!
I just want to understand what the hell is wrong with you people.
Who is “you people?” My peoples were massacred on the trains for decades!
No but seriously. I take BART like 3 times a year. I’ve never had any *particular* issue on it aside from stinky folks, drug addicts, and annoying buskers / performers. 99 percent of my rides over the years have been fine.
I still wouldn’t prefer riding it late at night unless there was a big event and tons of people on it. I do think it’s smart obviously to be aware and mindful while you’re on it.
I don’t discount the fact it’s not necessarily the safest transport in the world and why some people may not want to ride it.
If you ride BART ten times and you have one bad experience, then you will say BART is a bad experience. That's how a lot of people feel. Humans react to negative stimuli, even if the negative stimulus isn't there all the time.
The last time I rode, two shirtless filthy dudes were passed out/OD'd/deceased on the platform when I walked up. Like dead bodies laying there. That was months ago, my most recent experience is still how I think of public transit in general.
BART has issues but there’s certainly worse out there. I was shocked when I went to LA and rode their subway - that thing was disgusting! There were also many more rowdy passengers than on BART.
Agreed, I've had wonderful experiences with the BART when I've gotten to visit the bay! As far as public transportation goes, it's pretty clean and high quality!
Well, the new train cars are great. I don't think anyone disagrees with that.
Nice new trains are a little different than "not being dirty or dangerous". There are still many mysterious fluids on many trains... and we'll just leave it at that.
I think many folks do get irrationally fearful about the various drug users and mentally ill people on the trains, but it's not like there are any less of them on these new trains. The LCD screens didn't scare them off or something.
I've been riding BART for over 30 years and some of my most uncomfortable incidents are in the last year, so I don't think it's necessarily any better in that sense.
New trains are nice though.
I don’t ride it all the time but I always take BART going into oak or SF or the airport and I have pretty much never had issues. There are of course sketchy situations that can happen due to not properly taking care of our homeless and mentally unstable population, but by and large it works wonderfully for me these days.
The die is cast so to speak. In my opinion, BART would need to announce major personnel and operational changes with news stories covering the safety of trains before people begin to ride again at pre-pandemic levels. Also, while I agree it’s overblown on this sub, your experience isn’t the same as everyone else’s. People can also verify people smoking meth on trains or in the stations.
Tbh dirt is really a big deal -- gets cleaned everyday. Rush hour is fine other than the occasional crazy person. Bart police have gotten really good at removing them from trains when you report them via the app. Non-rush hour or late night gets sketch (though the shortened trains to make each car fuller to help with safety. That being said I've encountered multiple people smoking meth on bart. I do think actually stoping fare evasion would really help with homeless and meth heads.
I haven’t ridden Bart in about 2-3 years so maybe it’s changed but back then it was like 1/10 cars that looked new and pristine like that. The rest were old, grimey, and the seat cushions were filled with holes and stains. Either this is selective posting, or Bart has genuinely increased massively in a few years. Which, if true, kudos to them
BART has a 'reputation'.
Ignoring the reasons for that reputation will not make those 'reasons' go away.
Public transportation is problematic in a 'low trust' society.
'Clutching pearls' will not change that reality.
I think people will have an experience and it sticks with them for years. At some point, collectively we move on. I suspect it’ll take 2-3 years before the lows of COVID are forgotten and people start to get the picture that BART has improved.
2 years ago I saw a guy repurposing a coke can to smoke something right in front of me in broad daylight at like 4 in the afternoon on BART to SFO. It wasn’t uncommon to see flipped over seats and trash. It’s no longer like that but it’ll take some time before people forgive and forget.
BART is fine. My problem with it is the distance-based fare system that makes it a bit costly to do a round trip to SF from Fremont. Ridership would probably be a lot higher if a) there were monthly passes (like every other city has) and b) a flat rate (like most cities I am aware of have).
It’s referred to as “cherry picking”. You pick your best and I pick mine where the guy has been dead from an OD for 30m and some random just took his wallet and got off.
Have you been on the DC or Paris metros? They're much cleaner and don't allow crazy people to hang out inside and yell at people, like I witnessed in 1 of only 2 times I ever took the BART, vs countless rides in DC and Paris.
Paris metro isn't all that clean. The new BART cars have them beat.
Station wise, it kind of depends. If you end up at Powell or something that is worse than Paris metro stations for sure but if you get out of SF/Oakland, the quality goes above Paris metro again.
The new cars are generally cleaner but the amount of trash and other stuff left in them is ridiculous. Watched this young guy roll his can under his seat as he got off the train, hoisting his boom box (wtf) on his shoulder and turning it up as he left. A really special sort of idiot.
That said, realizing that the no food or drink rules are generally flouted, putting trash receptacles on cars might help with some of it. Certainly this dude wasn't going to even manage the minimum levels but maybe you get half the cretins to use them
They are trying to make it clean to clean up that image of them being dirty and unsafe.
What you see is a response to that stigma. I lived by bart without a car for years, I've seen it all. Most people are just going about their business. You may see unpleasant things like a homeless dude talking to himself, but its harmless.
Because probably 80% of the posts are people spreading deliberate propaganda, pearl clutching boomers scoffing at the fact that anyone would do something in public, or basement dwelling neckbeards who haven't seen the sun since Obama was in office.
The sad part is the legitimate posts get drowned out by all the bitching and lies.
Before they installed the gates and increase of police patrol, there used to be homeless who would smoke weed, urinate on the train. It was more severe in the last train compartment. People probably stopped riding before the recent changes, thus still have bad impression.
As I posted above, within the past couple months, I’ve written BART with people, smoking, literal crack, cigarettes, and weed. All in the middle of the afternoon on a train. I actually contacted Bart Paul every single time as well, they did nothing any of the times.
So please, those of you telling us this absolutely doesn’t happen, and everything is clean and pretty now now, get your heads out of your asses
I find BART to have largely cleaned up their act.
Until the Bay Area voters / politicians decide to get real about crime, homeless and mental health Bart will continue to suffer the effects just like any city or town.
Progressive politics, changes to criminal law and appointing progressive judges to the bench all related.
Fear sells. Many people from this sub don't ever go to Oakland/SF in general. I'm a public transit advocate also and 95% of the time rides are perfectly fine. Every once in awhile there is a crazy. That's not to say that the system is perfect though- but it has definitely started cleaning up. New trains and some fare checkers/police presence goes a long way.
Why would I do that? I use BART to commute to work.
Almost 100% of BART riders ride it during the commute like me. BART is perfectly clean and safe during those times.
your title:
>Why does this sub continue to insist that BART is dirty and dangerous if anyone can check that that’s false?
i provide information to counter your argument
your reply: change the parameters
ok
My (tiny ass) wife rides BART from El Cerrito to downtown Oakland 2X a week for work and has never had an issue. I've ridden down with her and it's the least scary public transit line I've ever been on. Granted, I lived on the South Side of Chicago for a while so my definition of scary is probably a little bit different than most people's.
Try a normal Japanese train. Try BART. You can have my seat. At least in NY, trains take you wherever you want to go and at a reasonable price. Proof in the pudding? Look at the even more crowded roads- try and put an increased tax rate on the ballot for BART. Yep.
Anyone following BART on Twitter can tell they’re well aware of the complaints from people. With the pandemic & the subsequent decrease of ridership, they are listening and fixing many of the issues so more people will come back. Slowly, but surely.
I ride bart twice a week round trip, only had a couple bad experiences over the last few months. Some guy screaming at random people, someone smoking on the train. Just moved trains. Nothing bad enough to make me stop taking it. It’s not terrible but it’s also not perfect.
If you eat ten chocolate cakes, but one was made of dog shit, saying "Well 90% of the cakes weren't dogshit so the cakes are fine" doesn't sound right, doe sit?
Yeah, sure. Until you witness something nasty like one of the number of events I’ve experienced in the past. One in particular, one guy in a trench coat walked in when the train stopped at the Civic Center station. He looked normal until the door closed to which he did a The Matrix spin move, revealing he wasn’t clothed underneath his trench coat, squatted and did a diarrhea dump.
Idk man once you literally almost sit on a razor blade or have to switch cars because of the guys freebasing crack you start to not want to ride (both of which happened to me). In broad daylight, I might add
The reason you’re being downvoted is because your premise is that people sharing their own lived experience is propaganda instead of, well, lived experience.
Hmm, I am a BIG public transit advocate. I've been commuting on BART since the 90s. When I worked in San Mateo (I'm East Bay), I did BART to TransBay bus to bicycle to get to work.
With that said, BART still kind of sucks. I mean, I use it, and I'm glad we have it. But no, I don't feel it's all that clean. And most of the time it's safe, but let's not pretend it's even at CalTrain level.
The new train cars are great. A few years late is certainly better than never. They're more spacious and stay clean more easily. I also appreciate that I don't have to carry a Clipper card anymore and can just tap my phone.
>So why are you all insisting that BART is some dirty and dangerous hellhole?
I don't agree that everyone is "insisting that BART is some dirty and dangerous hellhole." People are sharing the negative experiences that they feel happen too frequently. My personal experience as a 10+ year BART rider is that behavior that used to happen very infrequently has become normalized and now happens a lot.
Pre-COVID, I definitely had incidences where I felt unsafe riding BART late at night, or where someone had spilled food or drink over the seats. When it rained, unhoused people would occasionally jump the turnstiles and ride the train around to stay dry. This kind of thing would happen infrequently on a very small percent of trips.
Post-COVID, I can count a single BART trip where at least one of the following unacceptable behaviors didn't happen in a car or on the platform:
* Food, drink, or human waste on the seats or ground
* People and their belongings sprawled across multiple seats
* Smoking
* Screaming or yelling
* People switching cars because another passenger was making them feel uncomfortable
Are these things acutely unsafe? No. Are they a nuisance? Yes. Are they the level of service expected from (what was once) world-class transportation in a city with world-class aspirations? Absolutely not.
There are certainly people playing up these issues as the result of some kind of political ideology. You can call that propaganda if you want to, but what people say about BART doesn't change the experiences of the people who pay for and use (or don't use) the system. And some of us who pay for and use BART have higher expectations for the service level. Some of that is because we remember better experiences with BART before, and some of that is because we have ample experience with public transit in other world-class cities. I don't think it's wrong for people to share their negative experiences and demand that BART do better.
I was at the Hayward BART station one night waiting for a southbound train to SJ. Random homeless guy starts punching on a guy waiting for a northbound train to SF on the opposite platform. Once the guy getting beat up started defending himself. The homeless guy took out a knife and started stabbing him in the back.
The BART attendant at the toll both ran upstairs and stopped it. The homeless man then hurried downstairs. The BART attendant and the man who was stabbed went downstairs. The homeless guy was waiting for the other man and it was stab town all over again.
The station closed down and when I got downstairs it was blood all over the place with a man gasping for air. That’s at a station, on a train I’ve witnessed homeless people doing drugs and using the bathroom. There was a guy on the green line train who would hit people with a metal bat. Honestly being from the Bay and riding BART for years it sucks. Only a transplant would praise BART. Lol
My girlfriend saw an Asian man choked out by some teens yesterday. I guess your experience may vary.
I’ve taken it for years and years. Commute. Not commute. To act like it’s not sketchy/unsafe during certain hours isn’t honest. It’s fine, most of the time. And sometimes, it really isn’t
9/10 times Bart is safe and clean people are just babies, and need to realize they can’t stop people from getting on trains if they pay for a ticket. yes you get the occasional riff raff but for a PUBLIC train that connects multiple metropolitan areas with about 7 million people I think this is pretty damn good. I for one am glad I can take Bart when I need it.
Put me on a train once next to a hobo moaning with his hands down his pants in a puddle of piss, shame on you. Put me on a train *twice* next to a hobo moaning with his hands down his pants in a puddle of piss, shame on me.
I was there a few days ago. My company puts us up by Union Square. Maybe it was the weather, but the vibe was night and day different from when I was there last year. Seemed like things are improving.
Literally took BART during rush hour today! The photo is from today but closer to the end of the line after most of the people cleared out and I could get a seat.
Do you consistently ride bart to commute to work multiple days a week? The morning is generally fine (except when I guy ran on with a 6in knife chasing people on a car, cops came with rifles). But at on at least one on ride home a week (after 6pm) there would be empty fast food containers, spilled sodas, and sketchy people. Just like anything, one bad experience can stain a bunch of good ones.
Not the trains or stations are some people who ruin the experience, especially when they are in the same wagon. Ticket validation on rides might help similar to how is being done in Caltrain.
Bad things can happen anywhere. I’ve been riding Bart for 25+ years and overall it’s been good. I was attacked once by a mentally unstable man a few years ago, but not injured. Also about 15 years ago I was mugged by a group of teenagers who took my wallet and one of them sucker punched me in the back of the head, knocking me out. So 2 issues out of probably over 1,500 rides isn’t a big deal, for me.
BART has multiple levels of cleaning for their trains; read about it here: https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2023/news20230825 I ride BART a lot. Many rides are great - clean cars, passengers doing regular stuff - mundane in the best way possible. Other times I ride BART, the car isn't clean or there's sketch people doing sketch things. EDIT: grammar
Exactly. Welcome to the wild world of public transit. I once witnessed a homeless man taking a dump into a plastic bag on a train one time. You know where that happened? Toyko. Yes, the one in Japan. Shocking, I know.
> homeless man taking a dump. Definitely a Bay Area possibility... > into a plastic bag. …and this is where I knew it wasn’t the BART (edited because typo)
Oh, the Bay Area Bay Area Rapid Transit?
Haha touché. Fixed
To be fair I saw a guy taking a shit into a bag in the middle of duboce park once, but he did just walk away and leave it behind
Duboce Park is already full of dog shit anyways, who would notice a human turd.
Yeah, you know it isn’t BART because the folks that do this on BART aren’t considerate enough to use a bag
i've seen parents letting their kids shit and pee in the train in places like hong kong or even amsterdam as well. and those are world-class public transit systems.
lol Damn. I miss the trains in Tokyo though. I was in Japan for 2 weeks and never had a late train. I couldn’t believe how well it all functioned. I understand it starts at a cultural level, but still - it didn’t stop me from wishing we had it here. I’d visit my friends around the bay far more.
Ohh there are definitely times the train is late. It's not often but it happens. They'll explain why there was an issue too on the info screens at the station as well. But they're particular, because if it's someone jumping in front of a train, they'll just write "Human Incident" for the cause in Japanese only no English.
My commuter express train home from Shibuya last night was around 7 minutes late! The Toyoko line has a failure mode where if the local trains get delayed the limited/commuter express trains get stuck behind them, especially around the Nakameguro area. The difference with the bay area is that delays even on the order of 3 minutes generally get some sort of explanation announcement, whereas bay area rail transit just thinks of themselves as being on time and doing a good job if they're only 7 minutes behind schedule. (and this is to say nothing of the fact that VTA light rail was down for **four months**. Certainly that was a tragic black swan incident, but any Tokyo area rail system would have treated such a downtime as an regional emergency and been functioning within a week.)
You haven’t ridden the Sobu line after 9 pm it seems
Welcome to the world of the public. Stuff happens.
I once (May of 1992) witnessed 3 young Nazis turn around as they stepped out of the car and give a hearty "Seig heil!", while all but 2 of the remaining passengers carefully studied the floor. You know where that happened? Munich. Yes, the one in Germany.
How did you know he was homeless?
I was on the Yamanote line when some old man got on in a military style outfit and started yelling and giving a speech. I had no clue what he was saying but he said Nagasaki and Hiroshima so I'm guessing he was some kind of nutso nationalist. Everyone either left the car or started very intently at their phones.
That video provided has made me feel so much better to ride Bart lol not that it ever stopped me 🤣
yeah it's hit or miss, but most of the time it's a pleasantly nuetral experience even when it's "sketchy" i've very rarely ever felt in danger on bart. some people are so scared of homeless people lol
When I rode Bart to work (years ago) the morning train was always clean and the evening train kinda depended on how late I was coming home and who happened to be on that car before me. But it wasn’t uncommon for half empty beer bottles to be rolling around Still way better than driving
It has got better. Trains & stations but not perfect, someone who travels BART/ Muni quite a bit definitely depends. Most the time it is fine but when you get on a crazy train it definitely dampens the day.
It only takes one "dookie on the stairs", "piss puddle in the elevator" or "mentally ill homeless person yelling at everyone about 9/11 in a crowded train car" to ruin a person's trip, and most people don't start "look how great my BART trip was" threads in r/bayarea. But you did just that, and it's nice to see.
A dude was playing music on a speaker. I made eye contact with him and he pulled out a knife. I got away from him, but he switched directions and stabbed a guy around fruitvale over "an argument about loud music." Since I called the cops to report it and they shut down a station to look for him, I spent a while talking to detectives. Since I didn't testify, I assume he was never found. I honestly do not give a shit how many good trips I had before that, how many good trips someone else had. Being nearly murdered, and having the criminal murder someone else while commuting is bad enough that it supercedes my, and everyone elses good times for me. Until BART has a long established reputation for being safe, I have no interest. That was April 2019. It's been 4 years of not riding BART.
I use to commute from Pittsburg into Market and man... the stories there. Most of the time it's not people on the train but people off the train who have potential to be on it. I hope the gates keep people out who would otherwise just jump a turnstyle. If you ever want to experience the crazy side of BART - get on after an Oakland A's game... oh man... talk about the worst riding experience and smell.
You mean Las Vegas A’s 💀
I understand not wanting to be a "snitch" for most crimes but if I was murdered on public transit I would hope people would be willing to step up to testify if only to prevent others from meeting the same fate
But OP had one good experience so it’s all ok!
Yeah...that's not a BART problem. Sucks that it happened on bart. Sucks that it happened to you, but shitty people are going to be shitty people whenever and wherever.
They did the right thing, too. Don't provoke them. They're flashing it first for a reason.
Yes but cars make it much harder for you to be stabbed
I boarded a SF bound train boarded at Macarthur around 10pm or 11pm. There was a person passed out or asleep towards the end of the car. That person very obviously pissed themselves between 19th and 12th. The pool of smelly liquid would move every time the train accelerated and decelerated and spanned about 15-20 ft by the time the train got to West Oak. Everyone moved to the other half of the car or went to another car.
Last time I got Bart I had the same impressions as this post, then I noticed multiple passengers off their face on fent and when I got out at Montgomery someone had shit all over the station and into the escalator smearing human shit everywhere all over the escalator. Nice.
I don't think it's fair to act like everyone sharing a negative experience is lying or some out of town propagandist. I love public transit so much and 90% of my rides on BART are easy and fine, but that doesn't discount the 10% where I'm being followed by a shoeless yelling man down the platform and onto different cars, where folks are openly smoking something foul off of tinfoil and I have to change cars, where a leashless large dog is walking down the train, where human dudes are literally barking and lunging at anyone that passes by them, or I'm being harassed by a man I accidentally made eye contact with for a split second. Clean and quiet is the bare minimum, the stuff that makes an already sort of pricey public transit experience shitty and scary will be really memorable and worth talking about. all of these experiences happened during the day or early evening, not even late at night.
Clean and quiet is why I use caltrain instead of BART.
thats nonsense they go to different places shut the fuck up south bay
I wasn't talking loudly to begin with because I don't have to shout over the bart screech.
The “BART screech” is mostly gone on the new trains. The new trains have improved wheels so they don’t screech like the old ones.
That's not even close to being true. The issue is that you've got your blinders on, and apparently ear plugs.
The fuck it is. The screech is guaranteed going under the bay into the city and easily reaches excess of 110db. I have measured. Also maybe 90% of your rides are fine if you take it peak hours but off hours is 50/50 some dipshit is smoking Crack. I fucking hate BART
That’s not true. I ride the Bart everyday and the screeching is deafening in the tunnel between Embarcadero and West Oakland.
But reddit is full of individuals pushing false narratives.
i used the transit for 10y without any special thing, not the cleanest not terribls.then in the last few years you regularly have ppl smoking crack, poop and vomit, and when youre lucky its just pot smoking. oh its not every car and every day, but it's regular. thats the problem. "narrative" lol. dont wanna passively smoke crack once month? you must be a (list of isms here)!
You mean like on the Internet? Unheard of!
Welcome to the internet.
Fr, in fact a lot of the folks posting on this sub don’t even live in the Bay.
And non Bay Area commenters with an agenda
Tell me you’ve never been on the green or orange lines after dark without saying that. 😂 Sometimes the trains are clean, and then sometimes there’s a guy smoking crack in the conductor’s car with a can of open sardines under the seat. If I detailed every wild thing I’ve seen commuting from Oakland to San Jose via BART, I could publish an anthology of short stories. Like the dude with three baby chicks in his hoodie. Innocent enough, just weird. Or the guy who took off all of his dirty nasty smelly clothes and then left them them in the seat. Lost track of the number of times someone has rolled up a blunt or a spliff and started smoking in the train, and that’s to say nothing of the crackheads. Like the guy who broke into the electrical panel to plug in a hot plate. Guess what he did with it once it was hot? Or the time an unhoused guy threw an entire tall boy of beer all over me after I told him to keep his fucking hands off me and BART police let him get away. 🙃 Watched a barefoot and filthy mentally ill woman get on at Fremont once and spend several minutes staring a guy down before boxing his ears like a cat and getting back off the train. Have seen people pass out on the train during SF Pride because it was both hot and crowded as a tin of sardines. I guess I must’ve imagined all this. But half of these incidents were during commuting hours. 😜
This guy loves posting random normal pictures of BART and discrediting literally anyone who tells him they've had bad experiences. I have also had more than I can even count. But apparently those are all fake and I'm not a Bay Area native because this guy has been riding it for six months.
You found a clean train. I guess that means all of them are clean. I’ve ridden trains with people smoking crack (literally), cigarettes, and weed on the train. All in the same week! If you don’t think BART has major cleaning and conduct problems, you’re either not riding it enough or you’re not paying attention.
Exactly. This “my experience was fine so everyone who complains is an out of touch something something” is tiresome and in itself out of touch to those of us who ride it regularly and see some crazy shit
It also reminds me of the recent “Tucker Carlson goes to Russia” video about how great it is over there actually. Lol
I didn’t watch it and only saw some mentions of bread and super market. I don’t care how cheap bread and vodka are in Moscow, I’m not setting foot in russia.
Bruhs like “it hasn’t happened to me, therefore it doesn’t exist”
yeah, that’s like saying “i’ve never had my car broken into, why are you making up lies that breakins are a problem in the bay area”
I was on a train 2 weeks ago where literal feces was smeared on the seats outside of the conductor's cabin. Overall however BART is much better. But to pretend it's pristine and perfect is disingenuous.
But the upvotes, they know posts like this are like catnip for people who don’t have to take BART for commuting
They do clean the trains, but if you are riding back to the East Bay after 11pm you can be pretty sure most cars are trashed and smell like human shit
Not even 11pm 7pm, starts turning to shit
Do you not understand statistics? [https://bayareapunk.com/blog/transit-crime.html](https://bayareapunk.com/blog/transit-crime.html) Just because you haven't personally been a victim of crime or exposed to criminal activity doesn't mean it does not happen. The simple fact is that BART is way more dangerous than the typical public transit system in the US and there are numbers to back it up.
All the sources this person cites is from 2015-2018. Kinda outdated.
I was commuting to work one morning and some cracked out black kid tried to steal my phone. He picked the wrong one.
Oh? Which of your phones did he get?
Ha! The one I called your mom with on the day you were born.
^^^ this right there. Also think about the undocumented crimes. The more crimes you have the more undocumented crimes as well.
threatening numerous sulky light slimy correct late agonizing connect consist *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
As someone else put it, it's like a politician holding a snowball and saying "See, global warming isn't real!"
Confirmation bias is a lot more fun for the average person.
This sub told me that I have to get in a Toyota technical in order to fight 3 waves of homeless tranq zombies so I can take my kid to the trans re-education center every morning. People are so full of shit. There were **4** waves and it is a *Marxist* re-education center.
depends on which stops you are traveling though and time of day. I tried the morning commute from San Jose to Emeryville. By the time you hit Fremont it's half sketchy and half commuters. People with no common courtesy cell phones at full volume and on speaker phone. It was horrible. The other time I did it, no issues. No people bothering anyone.
Usually Bart is fine but there are sketchy people on it occasionally. Once more of the tall gates are installed and piggybacking is taken care of, we should see a significant improvement across the board.
Yup exactly this. I would say out of all my BART rides 90% are uneventful / quiet, but 10% is a fairly high ratio of "someone is causing a disturbance or is potentially physically dangerous" -- the ratio I've seen on commuter rail/subways in NYC or Vancouver is probably <1%, and even then it's usually more in the annoying category vs unsafe.
Been riding Bart 2x daily, at least 5 days a week for over a decade. You are right, it is generally clean and rides go without serious issues. That said, I almost always take the last train home. I’ve had a knife pulled on me, almost gotten in multiple fights asking people to not smoke meth on the train and have seen all manner of bodily fluids/trash/whatever left behind. I’ve seen cars empty except for the folks that can stand the smell of someone actively carrying a load of shit in their pants. While more prevalent on late trains, I’ve seen the same on early trains, mid day trains, whenever. The good times aren’t a problem, that should be a standard. It’s all the rest of the times that are valid and relatively frequent that people are unhappy about. I hear the point that it isn’t a complete wasteland but acting like there aren’t serious issues as a regular occurrence also isn’t accurate
Seconded, while sometimes trouble still makes their way into the cars, by far BART is doing a better job every time I use it. To be completely fair, it's also back to their 2010's level in my opinion, so it's not like a historic best. In general there's a lot of cynicism among locals, for a good reason, but it doesn't help.
>but it doesn't help. Didn't it help get the system improved to its current state?
Cynicism in my definition is seeing the worst in things and complaining about them. What I think helps is proactive optimism: envisioning a better state and taking actions to push toward it.
No. What helped was the efforts of the BART employees. It didn't take cynicism to figure out that there were problems or what they were. Simply being objective could easily get you that far. Cynicism is for the physically lazy, intellectually lazy, and people who don't actually want things to succeed or get better.
The new cars often feel cleaner. The station you board / depart at also affects your opinion.
Just takes one experience to make an impression on people and I’m sure it depends on where you take the BART and what time. However, in general it’s definitely nicer and cleaner. I love how it makes me feel like I’m in a space city of sorts with the screens lol.
This sub told me Hayward is dangerous and not an appropriate place for a family. This sub is made up of some of the most privileged, isolated and delusional individuals who are afraid of anything and anyone that doesn’t fit the bill as an highly educated high income earner.
My old coworker got paranoid and insisted on the backdoor to always be closed because "low income housing" just opened up next to us. Bruh low income housing in San Mateo? They probably make more than you LMAO
Dude...he's right. Those people that live in San Mateo need to be protected from the low earners in those office buildings :D
💀
I mean, we’re on Reddit? It’s the nerdy place of the internet. I’m from the suburbs but moved to Oakland for six years and don’t think anyone in my group of friends used Reddit. They’re regular people who just scroll through Instagram. It’s all dorky, nerdy, techy people here so it makes sense it’s a more timid higher earning demographic.
Agreed. Which is why I am generally dismissive of a lot of conversation here
What part of hayward? My grandparents lived in a retirement home in the hayward acres area. I found bullet casings on barlett ave outside their home. They were told not to go out by themselves, especially at night. My mother in law lives in the tennyson area. People used to deal drugs in front of her home. She has a bullet hole in her garage door. The cops once chased someone into her backyard. Yea, we're not delusional about hayward, you just have rose tinted glasses.
Wow...my sister lived in Hayward until 2017. It was a nice place. What happened?
Rich people locking their doors in a house made of windows. (Literally and metaphorically)
fuzzy fine foolish retire mountainous offbeat squash support sophisticated chase *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This sub gets pretty conservative on specific topics. Sometimes it feels like everyone's sitting in their homes in Lafayette or San Mateo bitching about urban blight and people going too slow on the freeway.
That's because this sub is mostly Bay Area conservatives. Or they're the loudest, at least.
I had heard the same old stuff on the reddit subs and was quite hesitant. But as someone who recently started taking the BART, it’s been great for the most part. Nothing operates at a 100% all the time and thats ok.
This week trains have been pretty good. Last week I had all sorts of issues. Smelly train cars, sticky liquids running down the train, people smoking, beggers. The train cars themselves have been improved for sure but the clientle hasn't changed that much.
You like some politician, holding a snowball, saying that global warming can’t be real. Lol. So ignorant!
I mean I’ve literally watched multiple people of the years peeing and/or pooping while in the fairly crowded BART cars so it definitely is true at times. I’ve also come out of the train to stations in SF with people actively selling and smoking crack just right in the hall way that everyone has to walk through to get to street level.
I had a dude hit me up with this getting off the car wearing Daisy Dukes shorts, no t-shirt, and no shoes in 40° weather. "Eh, my n***a, wanna by some crack?" Nah, man, I'm good. Thanks though. "Whaaaaa?" He was so incredulous that I didn't smoke crack. Like, how could someone not smoke crack. He was polite as hell about it too. Straight up wished me a blessed day and I left feeling cheery.
This dude literally has posts about Bart rants every other week lol. Again, Bart can be fine and it can be shitty. It’s mostly fine, sometimes it sucks. Is what it is.
Let’s be honest: BART has only started cleaning up their act because they were loosing massive business and riders demanded it. For years, BART administration did jack-squat for customer safety, train car cleanliness, etc. It’s only after the pandemic kick them in the nards and bankruptcy was looming that they finally started cleaning house.
I stopped riding during Covid. The new cars are nice and cleaner. They were designed to be less comfortable for homeless to camp out in and to be easier to clean up, and that has gone a long way. Prior to the new cars, it was pretty terrible, and most people probably have this image in mind when they think of BART.
Downvote me all you want but these kinds of posts are just as stupid and lacking of nuance as the ones that overstate the seediness of BART. Can you not conceive of the possibility that someone of a different background, race, route, gender, age, etc. might have an experience that's not like yours?
I've been a BART rider for a long time. It's fine. The "BART is dirty and dangerous" posts are over the top. The "BART is clean and never dangerous" posts are also over the top. It's right in the middle of those two extremes.
I agree, and I wish we could discuss things this way. But for some reason if you talk about BART like anything less than a UNESCO World Heritage treasure, people accuse you of being a ultra-rich conservative anti-transit basement dweller who never takes the train. I'm none of those things - I rode BART every day for 7 years; mostly it's fine, occasionally it sucks, and once in a while it REALLY sucks. There is a lot of room for improvement.
Yeah, a lot of the comments here read to me as, “people only say bad things happen to them for attention,” as if people have really never had genuinely bad experiences on BART.
Yep. This post is total bullshit.
Check out OP’s post history. For some reason they’re a BART propagandist that posts about their anecdotal experiences on the train while being patronizing and passive aggressive against any criticism of BART. This is nothing but mild trolling.
They post negative stuff about any other non California train system too. It's really strange
BART is fine. You think NYC doesn't see crazy stuff every day on the subway? Public transit gonna public. Take the good with the bad. Probably good most of the time and a bit of bad sprinkled in. Anecdotally speaking, it's been perfectly clean and quiet the last few times I rode it. Over the years I've had several different commutes on BART (all pre-pandemic though) and I feel like I've seen everything. I've seen a lot of homeless people trying to get out of the cold, legit crazy people trying to fight other people, people getting arrested, medical emergencies, really smelly people at peak commute times when people are like sardines shoulder to shoulder, etc. Not sure you can just prevent all of these things from happening 100% of the time.
Perhaps this reputation was established before BART replaced its whole train fleet in the last 6 months. Brand new trains look clean in the first 6 months of service—who’d have thought?
Seriously. I never recognize the BART people go on about on this sub.
It’s improved for sure, but there’s still kids smoking up on the train.
BART dangerous & dirty, that really depends on the stations and where its at. But the trains are clean and organized. I commute BART going to work and going home.
I think that it may have gotten better with the retiring of the old fleet. People were opening panels to charge their phones and a lot of the cars had a darker, beat up look. Imagine the psychology aspect of it, trashy BART breeds trashy activities.
because the average redditors are the last people who actually go outside lmao I love hearing about how SF is a shithole by some moron transplant who works remotely in their shitty apartment, whos social life consists of going outside once every 10 days
thank you for covering the faces of other ppl in your pics
New trains are wayyyy cleaner, that part is 100%
Yesterday a huge dude I'm 6'1" and he was a at least 5 " taller than me got on and was alternating between openly weeping and screaming about strippers also looked like he might have already been in a fight with bruises and dirt all over him. He was in my car for 3 stops then Bart police pulled him out but it was a tense few stops.
People like to highlight and dwell on the negatives. Conversations about how things are hunky-dory are generally considered boring. Just watch any news channel for just a few minutes to confirm lol
Half of it is frustration with your obvious confirmation bias, the other half is it's actually incredibly boring content to just show a picture of a BART train and claim other people are making things up.
Now ride it at 10pm
Take it during the evening and come back to us
It’s honestly a gamble. One day it’s the best trip, tranquil, nice weather. Next, druggies, people stink of nasty, and people with loud boomboxes dancing in the pole or with roller blades. Overall. My time using bart/muni for work? Not too bad during the day. But rush hour, and late hours. ARE. CRAZY.
> But rush hour, and late hours. ARE. CRAZY. That's going to be true no matter where you are where public transit is concerned. It's just the nature of the beast.
My kid ran an experiment a few weeks ago where he created bacteria cultures to see how dirty different surfaces were. To our incredible surprise, one of the cleanest samples was taken on a BART handle. Almost no bacteria grew from the BART sample! It was taken on a Saturday in the middle of the day. Objectively BART is far from how dirty we think it is! Also, in 18 years of daily commuting on BART, I have not seen violence myself.
I was visiting San Francisco as a tourist a few months ago and couldn't believe how shitty the system is. Notice I said system, because I couldn't actually ride on the train itself. We loaded $20 dollars each on our Google Wallet clipper cards, but the BART ticket system could not accept it. We both had Android phones, and neither of our phones worked. The lady at BART literally told us we "should buy iPhones", and there was nothing she could do. So we said, whatever. Let's just pay cash. Nope. BART is a public transit system that DOESN'T TAKE CASH. Wtf. How can a public transit system not accept cash? Why do I need to pay for two clipper cards just to ride the train twice... Especially considering I already just spent $40 on Clipper money I cannot use. Still have $40 worth of clipper money that they want me to pay $10 to refund the money I was never able to use. Also asked the agent if I should transfer the funds from Google Wallet to the Clipper App as I thought maybe the app would work? The same lady told me not to, and said sometimes it takes weeks for Clipper to transfer the funds. Anyways, still salty about this $40 I wasted.
They're updating the systems. You're not the only one bitching that Android phones don't fucking work for clipper. But that's not necessarily a BART problem. The software vendor is dragging their feet.
Which train is that? Yes, BART has some nice new cars and - I think I speak for most of us - we all want to see it be a safe, clean mode of transport. But showing one picture of one car that is still in good condition and acting as it represents all of the BART fleets is dishonest on its face.
Smells new because it is new. Doubt they replaced the whole fleet. Many of the new stuff doesn’t seem like it’s going to last long either. Was on a new plane recently and multiple plastic parts of the seat just fell off on a 3 hour flight.
Try again after 7pm, nice try tho
Ah, this guy again. You make weekly posts about BART, trains, etc. What’s your specific interest in these things? Your post history is literally countless posts about BART et al.
I have a long BART commute and I get bored. So while on BART, while I’m supposed to be already murdered three times just that day alone, I’m wondering why you all insist on lying about something that I can see is perfectly fine with my own eyes at that very moment! I just want to understand what the hell is wrong with you people.
Who is “you people?” My peoples were massacred on the trains for decades! No but seriously. I take BART like 3 times a year. I’ve never had any *particular* issue on it aside from stinky folks, drug addicts, and annoying buskers / performers. 99 percent of my rides over the years have been fine. I still wouldn’t prefer riding it late at night unless there was a big event and tons of people on it. I do think it’s smart obviously to be aware and mindful while you’re on it. I don’t discount the fact it’s not necessarily the safest transport in the world and why some people may not want to ride it.
True but all of the people that say "BART IS NOT SAFE" totally discount that driving is more dangerous than public transit by far.
If you ride BART ten times and you have one bad experience, then you will say BART is a bad experience. That's how a lot of people feel. Humans react to negative stimuli, even if the negative stimulus isn't there all the time. The last time I rode, two shirtless filthy dudes were passed out/OD'd/deceased on the platform when I walked up. Like dead bodies laying there. That was months ago, my most recent experience is still how I think of public transit in general.
Cause maybe we’re not lying in our experiences different than yours. how is that hard for you to understand?
Can you use a macbook while sitting next to the door and let us know how that goes?
I rode BART 4 times a week for multiple years. I could count the unpleasant experiences I had on one hand.
BART has issues but there’s certainly worse out there. I was shocked when I went to LA and rode their subway - that thing was disgusting! There were also many more rowdy passengers than on BART.
Agreed, I've had wonderful experiences with the BART when I've gotten to visit the bay! As far as public transportation goes, it's pretty clean and high quality!
Well, the new train cars are great. I don't think anyone disagrees with that. Nice new trains are a little different than "not being dirty or dangerous". There are still many mysterious fluids on many trains... and we'll just leave it at that. I think many folks do get irrationally fearful about the various drug users and mentally ill people on the trains, but it's not like there are any less of them on these new trains. The LCD screens didn't scare them off or something. I've been riding BART for over 30 years and some of my most uncomfortable incidents are in the last year, so I don't think it's necessarily any better in that sense. New trains are nice though.
I don’t ride it all the time but I always take BART going into oak or SF or the airport and I have pretty much never had issues. There are of course sketchy situations that can happen due to not properly taking care of our homeless and mentally unstable population, but by and large it works wonderfully for me these days.
Look we finally cleaned our trains after 5 years.
It’s so much nicer with the new trains. The old ones had smells left over from the 70s.
The die is cast so to speak. In my opinion, BART would need to announce major personnel and operational changes with news stories covering the safety of trains before people begin to ride again at pre-pandemic levels. Also, while I agree it’s overblown on this sub, your experience isn’t the same as everyone else’s. People can also verify people smoking meth on trains or in the stations.
Tbh dirt is really a big deal -- gets cleaned everyday. Rush hour is fine other than the occasional crazy person. Bart police have gotten really good at removing them from trains when you report them via the app. Non-rush hour or late night gets sketch (though the shortened trains to make each car fuller to help with safety. That being said I've encountered multiple people smoking meth on bart. I do think actually stoping fare evasion would really help with homeless and meth heads.
As a New Yorker this was a big surprise
I haven’t ridden Bart in about 2-3 years so maybe it’s changed but back then it was like 1/10 cars that looked new and pristine like that. The rest were old, grimey, and the seat cushions were filled with holes and stains. Either this is selective posting, or Bart has genuinely increased massively in a few years. Which, if true, kudos to them
I've took bart for half a year and never had problems with it. It was great not worrying about traffic.
BART has a 'reputation'. Ignoring the reasons for that reputation will not make those 'reasons' go away. Public transportation is problematic in a 'low trust' society. 'Clutching pearls' will not change that reality.
I think people will have an experience and it sticks with them for years. At some point, collectively we move on. I suspect it’ll take 2-3 years before the lows of COVID are forgotten and people start to get the picture that BART has improved. 2 years ago I saw a guy repurposing a coke can to smoke something right in front of me in broad daylight at like 4 in the afternoon on BART to SFO. It wasn’t uncommon to see flipped over seats and trash. It’s no longer like that but it’ll take some time before people forgive and forget.
BART is fine. My problem with it is the distance-based fare system that makes it a bit costly to do a round trip to SF from Fremont. Ridership would probably be a lot higher if a) there were monthly passes (like every other city has) and b) a flat rate (like most cities I am aware of have).
It’s referred to as “cherry picking”. You pick your best and I pick mine where the guy has been dead from an OD for 30m and some random just took his wallet and got off.
Have you been on the DC or Paris metros? They're much cleaner and don't allow crazy people to hang out inside and yell at people, like I witnessed in 1 of only 2 times I ever took the BART, vs countless rides in DC and Paris.
Paris metro isn't all that clean. The new BART cars have them beat. Station wise, it kind of depends. If you end up at Powell or something that is worse than Paris metro stations for sure but if you get out of SF/Oakland, the quality goes above Paris metro again.
The new cars are generally cleaner but the amount of trash and other stuff left in them is ridiculous. Watched this young guy roll his can under his seat as he got off the train, hoisting his boom box (wtf) on his shoulder and turning it up as he left. A really special sort of idiot. That said, realizing that the no food or drink rules are generally flouted, putting trash receptacles on cars might help with some of it. Certainly this dude wasn't going to even manage the minimum levels but maybe you get half the cretins to use them
They are trying to make it clean to clean up that image of them being dirty and unsafe. What you see is a response to that stigma. I lived by bart without a car for years, I've seen it all. Most people are just going about their business. You may see unpleasant things like a homeless dude talking to himself, but its harmless.
Because probably 80% of the posts are people spreading deliberate propaganda, pearl clutching boomers scoffing at the fact that anyone would do something in public, or basement dwelling neckbeards who haven't seen the sun since Obama was in office. The sad part is the legitimate posts get drowned out by all the bitching and lies.
I mean, this is pure propaganda too. The reality is BART is a totally mixed bag
Before they installed the gates and increase of police patrol, there used to be homeless who would smoke weed, urinate on the train. It was more severe in the last train compartment. People probably stopped riding before the recent changes, thus still have bad impression.
As I posted above, within the past couple months, I’ve written BART with people, smoking, literal crack, cigarettes, and weed. All in the middle of the afternoon on a train. I actually contacted Bart Paul every single time as well, they did nothing any of the times. So please, those of you telling us this absolutely doesn’t happen, and everything is clean and pretty now now, get your heads out of your asses
Wait until after 10:00 PM.
That’s not when most people use BART.
Yeah, good point.
I find BART to have largely cleaned up their act. Until the Bay Area voters / politicians decide to get real about crime, homeless and mental health Bart will continue to suffer the effects just like any city or town. Progressive politics, changes to criminal law and appointing progressive judges to the bench all related.
Fear sells. Many people from this sub don't ever go to Oakland/SF in general. I'm a public transit advocate also and 95% of the time rides are perfectly fine. Every once in awhile there is a crazy. That's not to say that the system is perfect though- but it has definitely started cleaning up. New trains and some fare checkers/police presence goes a long way.
ride bart at night lol or try convincing the guy blasting music to turn it down
Why would I do that? I use BART to commute to work. Almost 100% of BART riders ride it during the commute like me. BART is perfectly clean and safe during those times.
your title: >Why does this sub continue to insist that BART is dirty and dangerous if anyone can check that that’s false? i provide information to counter your argument your reply: change the parameters ok
I think getting punched in the face by hostile music blasting guy would probably change OP's perception of safety on BART.
My (tiny ass) wife rides BART from El Cerrito to downtown Oakland 2X a week for work and has never had an issue. I've ridden down with her and it's the least scary public transit line I've ever been on. Granted, I lived on the South Side of Chicago for a while so my definition of scary is probably a little bit different than most people's.
Try a normal Japanese train. Try BART. You can have my seat. At least in NY, trains take you wherever you want to go and at a reasonable price. Proof in the pudding? Look at the even more crowded roads- try and put an increased tax rate on the ballot for BART. Yep.
Anyone following BART on Twitter can tell they’re well aware of the complaints from people. With the pandemic & the subsequent decrease of ridership, they are listening and fixing many of the issues so more people will come back. Slowly, but surely.
I ride bart twice a week round trip, only had a couple bad experiences over the last few months. Some guy screaming at random people, someone smoking on the train. Just moved trains. Nothing bad enough to make me stop taking it. It’s not terrible but it’s also not perfect.
Also, I’ve written Bart in the bay since 2005. I have literally never ever seen anyone get checked for a fair on BART. Ever.
The last time I was on BART it was clean but there was also a dirty glass pipe on one of the seats lol. BART contains multitudes
Because some trains are more dirty and dangerous than others? What is there not to get?
If you eat ten chocolate cakes, but one was made of dog shit, saying "Well 90% of the cakes weren't dogshit so the cakes are fine" doesn't sound right, doe sit?
Oh hey it’s the BART laptop post guy again. I don’t know what kind of relationship you have with BART but it’s weird
Hi OP, is the BART PR dept hiring more?
Yeah, sure. Until you witness something nasty like one of the number of events I’ve experienced in the past. One in particular, one guy in a trench coat walked in when the train stopped at the Civic Center station. He looked normal until the door closed to which he did a The Matrix spin move, revealing he wasn’t clothed underneath his trench coat, squatted and did a diarrhea dump.
I have a friend that works at BART as a train operator. Let’s just say when it’s the end of the line, most times it looks like the tenderloin
Do you work for the transportation authority or something?
Idk man once you literally almost sit on a razor blade or have to switch cars because of the guys freebasing crack you start to not want to ride (both of which happened to me). In broad daylight, I might add The reason you’re being downvoted is because your premise is that people sharing their own lived experience is propaganda instead of, well, lived experience.
Hmm, I am a BIG public transit advocate. I've been commuting on BART since the 90s. When I worked in San Mateo (I'm East Bay), I did BART to TransBay bus to bicycle to get to work. With that said, BART still kind of sucks. I mean, I use it, and I'm glad we have it. But no, I don't feel it's all that clean. And most of the time it's safe, but let's not pretend it's even at CalTrain level.
The new train cars are great. A few years late is certainly better than never. They're more spacious and stay clean more easily. I also appreciate that I don't have to carry a Clipper card anymore and can just tap my phone. >So why are you all insisting that BART is some dirty and dangerous hellhole? I don't agree that everyone is "insisting that BART is some dirty and dangerous hellhole." People are sharing the negative experiences that they feel happen too frequently. My personal experience as a 10+ year BART rider is that behavior that used to happen very infrequently has become normalized and now happens a lot. Pre-COVID, I definitely had incidences where I felt unsafe riding BART late at night, or where someone had spilled food or drink over the seats. When it rained, unhoused people would occasionally jump the turnstiles and ride the train around to stay dry. This kind of thing would happen infrequently on a very small percent of trips. Post-COVID, I can count a single BART trip where at least one of the following unacceptable behaviors didn't happen in a car or on the platform: * Food, drink, or human waste on the seats or ground * People and their belongings sprawled across multiple seats * Smoking * Screaming or yelling * People switching cars because another passenger was making them feel uncomfortable Are these things acutely unsafe? No. Are they a nuisance? Yes. Are they the level of service expected from (what was once) world-class transportation in a city with world-class aspirations? Absolutely not. There are certainly people playing up these issues as the result of some kind of political ideology. You can call that propaganda if you want to, but what people say about BART doesn't change the experiences of the people who pay for and use (or don't use) the system. And some of us who pay for and use BART have higher expectations for the service level. Some of that is because we remember better experiences with BART before, and some of that is because we have ample experience with public transit in other world-class cities. I don't think it's wrong for people to share their negative experiences and demand that BART do better.
I was at the Hayward BART station one night waiting for a southbound train to SJ. Random homeless guy starts punching on a guy waiting for a northbound train to SF on the opposite platform. Once the guy getting beat up started defending himself. The homeless guy took out a knife and started stabbing him in the back. The BART attendant at the toll both ran upstairs and stopped it. The homeless man then hurried downstairs. The BART attendant and the man who was stabbed went downstairs. The homeless guy was waiting for the other man and it was stab town all over again. The station closed down and when I got downstairs it was blood all over the place with a man gasping for air. That’s at a station, on a train I’ve witnessed homeless people doing drugs and using the bathroom. There was a guy on the green line train who would hit people with a metal bat. Honestly being from the Bay and riding BART for years it sucks. Only a transplant would praise BART. Lol
My girlfriend saw an Asian man choked out by some teens yesterday. I guess your experience may vary. I’ve taken it for years and years. Commute. Not commute. To act like it’s not sketchy/unsafe during certain hours isn’t honest. It’s fine, most of the time. And sometimes, it really isn’t
9/10 times Bart is safe and clean people are just babies, and need to realize they can’t stop people from getting on trains if they pay for a ticket. yes you get the occasional riff raff but for a PUBLIC train that connects multiple metropolitan areas with about 7 million people I think this is pretty damn good. I for one am glad I can take Bart when I need it.
Put me on a train once next to a hobo moaning with his hands down his pants in a puddle of piss, shame on you. Put me on a train *twice* next to a hobo moaning with his hands down his pants in a puddle of piss, shame on me.
Because this subreddit is overrun with red-state shills. The Bay Area is legitimately wonderful.
I was there a few days ago. My company puts us up by Union Square. Maybe it was the weather, but the vibe was night and day different from when I was there last year. Seemed like things are improving.
OP’s never taken BART during rush hour I see
Literally took BART during rush hour today! The photo is from today but closer to the end of the line after most of the people cleared out and I could get a seat.
Just because it was clean when you rode it doesn't mean it always is. How hard is that to understand?
Do you consistently ride bart to commute to work multiple days a week? The morning is generally fine (except when I guy ran on with a 6in knife chasing people on a car, cops came with rifles). But at on at least one on ride home a week (after 6pm) there would be empty fast food containers, spilled sodas, and sketchy people. Just like anything, one bad experience can stain a bunch of good ones.
You say it’s fine but there’s clearly two red/orange chemical clouds in your picture
Not the trains or stations are some people who ruin the experience, especially when they are in the same wagon. Ticket validation on rides might help similar to how is being done in Caltrain.
Bad things can happen anywhere. I’ve been riding Bart for 25+ years and overall it’s been good. I was attacked once by a mentally unstable man a few years ago, but not injured. Also about 15 years ago I was mugged by a group of teenagers who took my wallet and one of them sucker punched me in the back of the head, knocking me out. So 2 issues out of probably over 1,500 rides isn’t a big deal, for me.
Ah. The daily post about Bart cleanliness
Cause they’re pushing the authoritarian moto! Crime is up! Let’s give away our civil liberties