If you’ve been following BART, you might have heard about a Facebook effort to keep trains running later on weekends. A Facebook group named Make BART Trains run 24 Hours has over 24,700 members, and urged BART to study the possibility of later trains on Friday and Saturday nights.
BART studied the impact of keeping the trains running an hour later on Friday and Saturday nights. Unfortunately, BART has a single set of tracks (unlike New York City’s metro, and others), so trains have to be shut down for maintenance every night, so keeping the trains running one hour later would require an equal delay the next morning.
BART found that serving the late-night crowd would unfairly impact a greater number of people using BART the following morning. Specifically, 70% of Saturday morning riders are going to or from work, compared to only 40% of Friday night riders. A greater portion of the Saturday morning riders have lower incomes and they greatly depend on transit, so the proposal was scrapped.
Now, BART has responded with with a compromise.
By extending Friday night service by 30 minutes, Saturday service would only have to be delayed 20 minutes – to about 6:20 am. The new plan would also add a little extra bus service to connect the places losing early morning service.
This Saturday, BART representatives will available at the concourse levels of the Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell and Civic Center stations from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. to discuss the proposal with passengers, and to gather input from BART riders on the the proposed early morning trains and bus service alternative.
All BART riders are also invited to comment on the proposal by e-mail to service@bart.gov by Oct. 31.
Frustrated? Don’t be. Originally, BART was closed on weekends. We’ve come a long way.
