Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is a rapid-transit commuter rail system serving the San Francisco Bay Area. The heavy-rail public transit system connects downtown San Francisco with suburbs in the East Bay and northern San Mateo County. BART operates five lines on of track with 43 stations in four counties. With average weekday ridership of 374,949 passengers^[1], BART is the fifth busiest heavy rail rapid transit system in the United States.

BART is operated by the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, a special-purpose transit district formed in 1957 covering San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties. The name BART is an acronym and is pronounced as a word, not as individual letters. In some ways, BART is a successor to the Key System, which ran streetcars across the lower deck of the San Francisco Bay Bridge until 1958.

BART today

BART system station map

Hours of operation and frequencies

The BART system consists of five lines, but most of the network consists of more than one line on the same track. Trains on each line historically ran every fifteen minutes on weekdays and twenty minutes during the evenings, weekends and holidays; however, since a given station might be served by as many as four lines, it could have service as frequently as every three to four minutes.

As of January 1, 2008, service on every line is at 15-minute intervals at all times except for Saturdays between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., when service is at 20-minute intervals. Also, as of January 1, 2008, BART service begins around 4:00 a.m. on weekdays, 6:00 a.m. on Saturdays, and 8:00 a.m. on Sundays. Service ends every day near midnight with station closings timed to the last train at station. Two of the five lines, the Millbrae?Richmond and SF/Daly City?Fremont lines, do not have night (after 7 p.m.) or Sunday service, but all stations remain accessible by transfer from the other lines.^[2] All-Nighter Network service is available when BART is closed. All but six BART stations are served (as well as eight Caltrain stations). BART tickets are not accepted on these buses, and each of the four bus systems charge their own fare, which can be up to $ 3.50; a four-system ride can cost as much as $ 9.50 as of 2007.^[3]

Connecting rail and bus transit services

AC Transit bus stop at Bay Fair Station

BART connects to San Francisco's local light rail system, the Muni Metro. The upper track level of BART's Market Street subway, originally designed for the lines to Marin County, was turned over to Muni and both agencies share the Embarcadero, Montgomery Street, Powell and Civic Center stations. Some Muni Metro lines connect with (or pass nearby) the BART system at the Balboa Park and Glen Park stations.

A number of bus transit services connect to BART, which, while managed by separate agencies, are integral to the successful functioning of the system. The primary providers include the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), Alameda-Contra Costa Transit (AC Transit), San Mateo County Transit District (SamTrans), Central Contra Costa Transit Authority (County Connection), and the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District (Golden Gate Transit). Until 1997, BART ran its own "BART Express" connector buses,^[6] which ran to eastern Alameda County and far eastern and western areas of Contra Costa County; these routes were later devolved to sub-regional transit agencies such as Tri-Delta Transit and the Livermore Amador Valley Transit Authority (WHEELS) or, in the case of Dublin/Pleasanton service, replaced by a full BART extension.

BART is connected to Oakland International Airport via AirBART shuttle buses, which bring travelers to and from the Coliseum/Oakland Airport BART station. These buses are operated by BART and accept exact-change BART fare cards in addition to exact change. BART also connects to the San Francisco International Airport, though in this case the train actually enters the airport directly and no shuttle is necessary, although connections are available to AirTrain for those not departing or arriving from the international terminal.

Other services connect to BART including the Emery Go Round (Emeryville), WestCAT (north-western Contra Costa County), Benicia Transit (Benicia), Union City Transit (Union City), and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA, in Silicon Valley).

The bus service connecting the University of California, Berkeley to the Berkeley BART station was once called Humphrey Go-BART, a spoonerism of the famous actor and director Humphrey Bogart. It has since been replaced by a number of regular AC Transit bus routes and shuttle bus routes operated by the university.

Other connecting services

BART hosts carsharing locations at many stations, a program pioneered by City CarShare. Riders can transfer from BART and complete their journeys by car. BART has started to offer long-term airport parking through a third-party vendor^[7] at most East Bay stations. Travelers must make an on-line reservation in advance and pay the daily fee of $5 before they can leave their cars at the BART parking lot.

Casual carpools have formed at North Berkeley station and the area around El Cerrito Del Norte station. The lots are convenient since most carpoolers use public transit back to their final destination. However, because of how BART charges for parking, passengers cannot park at most BART lots without paying a fare.

System details

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BART comprises of track and 43 stations.^[8] The system uses a broad rail gauge, as opposed to the standard gauge predominantly found in the United States. Trains can achieve a centrally-controlled maximum speed of and provide a systemwide average speed of with twenty-second station dwell times. Trains operate at a minimum length of three cars per California Public Utilities Commission guidelines to a maximum length of 10 cars, spanning the entire length of a platform.^[9] At its maximum length of , BART has the longest train length of any metro system in the United States. The system also features car widths of , a maximum gradient of 4%, and a minimum curve radius of .^[10]

A photo of the third rails used on the BART system. Notice how the rail changes location relative to the train upon entering the station and the crossover walkway crossing the trackway. Notice the walkway on the left side of the trackway in the distance, which is the emergency walkway for the aerial trackway leading into the Daly City station ? again, the third rail positioned opposite of this walkway.

Underground tunnels, aerial structures and the Transbay Tube have evacuation walkways and passageways to allow for train evacuation without exposing passengers to easy, inadvertent contact with the third rail, which is located as far away from these walkways as possible. The voltage on the third rail is 1000 V DC, so there are notices throughout the system warning passengers of its danger. In addition, BART posts notices inside each train car warning of the third rail and the four paddle-like rail contact shoes protruding from the underside of each car by the rail wheel trucks.

Many of the original system 1970s era BART stations, especially the aerial stations, feature simplistic Brutalist architecture.

Ridership records have been set during large scale regional-in-scope events such as the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade.^{[11] [12]} The records included a Sunday record of 224,500 that coincided with an Oakland A's baseball game and a weekday record of 405,400 set on September 8, 2008 when both the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Raiders had home games.^[12] The one week record for ridership was 2,317,800 between June 23 and June 29, 2008. this broke the previous all time high of 2,301,800 achieved during a closure of the Bay Bridge.^[11]

After several high-profile incidents involving Segways, including an incident where a Segway was run over by a train after falling onto the tracks, BART banned them 45 days until they could regroup and set up a plan to mediate the issue.^[13] The consensus reached was the institution of a rules similar to bicycles where the Segways would be disallowed during commute hours, except for disabled persons and that the devices could not be on or ridden past the fare gates similar to the rules for all wheeled devices such as skateboards and scooters.^[13] Furthermore a permitting system has been established requiring registration for them to be used on the system.^[13]

Rolling stock

Refurbished B car interior

C (C1) car interior

To run a typical peak morning commute, BART requires 579 cars. Of those, 541 are scheduled to be in active service; the other 38 are used to build up four spare trains (essential for maintaining on-time service). At any one time, the rest of the fleet of 669 cars is in for repair, maintenance, or some type of planned modification work. ^[14]

The A cars and the B cars were built from 1968 to 1971 by Rohr Industries, an aerospace manufacturing company which had only recently made its foray into mass-transit equipment manufacturing, touting yet untested space-age design techniques. The A cars were designed as leading or trailing cars only, with a fiberglass operator's cab housing train control equipment and BART's two-way communication system. The A cars are distinguished by their aerodynamic leading edge extending longer than their B- and C-car siblings. A cars can comfortably seat 72 passengers, and under crush load, 150 passengers. B cars have no operator's cab and are used in the middle of trains to carry passengers only; B cars have the same passenger capacity as A cars. Currently, BART operates 59 A cars and 380 B cars.http://www.bart.gov/docs/FINAL_FY08_SRTP_CIP.pdf.^[15] BART's livery has remained effectively unchanged throughout its history.

The C cars were built by Alstom between 1987 and 1989. The C cars have a similar fiberglass operator's cab and control and communications equipment as the A cars, but unlike A cars, do not have the aerodynamic nose design, thus allowing them to be used as middle cars as well. The dual purpose of the C cars allows faster train-size changes without having to move the train to a switching yard. C cars can comfortably seat 64 (4 seats were lost compared to the A/B cars by eliminating one row of seats to accommodate the operator?s cab and 4 additional seats were lost by eliminating one pair of seats next to the left-side forward door on each side to provide space for wheelchairs) and under crush load accommodate 150 passengers. The latest order, from Morrison-Knudsen (now Washington Group International), was for C2 cars, which are essentially the same as C cars, but feature an updated, third-generation interior with a blue/gray motif, in contrast to the previous blue and brown colors. C2 cars have flip-up seats near the left-side forward door to accommodate passengers in wheelchairs, and red lights on posts near the door to warn the hearing-impaired when the doors are about to close. C2 cars can comfortably seat 68 passengers (including the flip-up seats), and under crush load can carry 150 passengers. Since the purchase of C2s, the original C cars are also referred to as C1 cars. Currently, BART operates 150 C1 cars and 80 C2 cars.

In 1995, BART contracted with ADtranz (acquired by Bombardier Transportation in 2001) to refurbish and overhaul the 439 original Rohr A- and B-cars, updating the old vintage brown fabric seats to the less-toxic and easier-to-clean,^[16] light-blue polyurethane seats in use today and bringing the cars in general to the same level of interior amenities as the C2 fleet. The Rohr cars were also rebuilt with ADtranz 3-phase Alternating Current (AC) traction motors with IGBT inverters, model 1507C. The seven-year project was completed in 2002. All BART cars have upholstered seats and nearly all cars have carpeting except for some C1 and/or C2 cars. Because one of the original design goals was for all BART riders to be seated, the older cars have fewer provisions such as grab bars for standing passengers. Newer cars are more accommodating in this area; however, unlike many other urban transit systems, hand straps are not found on BART trains. Flip-up seats (found in C2 cars) were excluded from the refurbishment (reducing seating capacity from 72 to 68), in order to provide designated areas for luggage, wheelchairs and bicycles. Consequently, the original C (or C1) cars have the oldest interior design, as they have not been refurbished and were not purchased recently enough to have the "newer" convenience features; for example, they lack vertical grab bars in the middle of the car and do not have the in-post red lights to warn of closing doors.

The A, B, and C cars were all given 3-digit numbers originally, but when refurbished 1000 was added to the number of each individual A/B car (e.g. car 633 would become 1633). The C2 cars are numbered in the 2500 series; the C/C1 cars still have 3-digit numbers.

Prior to rehabilitation, the Direct Current (DC) traction motors used on the 439 Rohr BART cars were built by Westinghouse, the same company that also built the automatic train control system for BART. The Westinghouse traction motors are model 1463 with chopper controls. The Westinghouse DC motors are still in use on the Alstom C (C1) and Morrison-Knudsen C2 cars.

The motors that were pulled from the Rohr cars during rehabilitation were retained as spare motors for use on the C1 and C2 cars. Other undercar systems also built by Westinghouse on the 439 Rohr BART cars before rehabilitation were the auxiliary power box, the hydraulic pumps for the brakes, the air suspension, and the brake control systems (which were part of the propulsion logic cradle that was mounted in the chopper control semiconductor box). The HVAC system on the Rohr BART cars before rehabilitation were built by Thermo King, when it was a subsidiary of Westinghouse (Thermo King is now a subsidiary of Ingersoll-Rand). The current HVAC systems on the rehabbed Rohr-built Gen 1 cars were built by Wabtec.

The cars, which all have just two doors on each side, often cause extended wait times at stations as passengers must negotiate groups of standees in order to exit or enter the train. To speed up service, BART has considered introducing new, three-door cars.^[17]

Governance

The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District is a special governmental agency created by the State of California consisting of Alameda County, Contra Costa County, and the City and County of San Francisco. San Mateo County, which hosts six BART stations, is not part of the BART District. It is governed by an elected Board of Directors with each of the nine directors representing a specific geographic area within the BART district. BART has its own police force.

While the district includes all of the cities and communities in its jurisdiction, some of these cities do not have stations on the BART system. This has caused tensions among property owners in cities like Livermore who pay BART taxes but must travel outside the city to receive BART service. In areas like Fremont, the majority of commuters do not commute in the direction that BART would take them (many Fremonters commute to San Jose, where there is currently no BART service). This would be alleviated with the completion of a BART-to-San Jose extension project.

However, some cities and towns are near enough to cities with BART stations that residents commute via a bus or car to the nearest BART station. Emeryville, for instance, has no BART service, but has a free shuttle service, the Emery-Go-Round, that takes passengers to the nearby MacArthur station in Oakland. Similarly, Albany does not have a BART station of its own. The city's residents can go to either North Berkeley (in Alameda County) or El Cerrito Plaza (in Contra Costa County) stations for services. For those wishing to drive their cars to the stations instead, many BART stations offer many kinds of parking options.^[18]

Fares

Ticket vending machines at the Powell Street Station

A standard-fare BART ticket. Notice the initial purchased fare printed parallel to the magnetic strip, and the card's remaining balance printed on the left, updated upon each exit. Images of older tickets, a blue, new-style ticket, and other color tickets can be found here.

BART uses a system of five different color-coded tickets for regular fare, special fare, and discount fare to select groups as follows:^[28]

• Blue tickets ? General: the most common type, includes high-value discount tickets
• Red tickets ? Disabled Persons and children aged 4 to 12: 62.5% discount, special ID required (children under the age of 4 ride free)
• Green tickets ? Seniors age 65 or over: 62.5% discount, proof of age required for purchase
• Orange tickets ? Student: special, restricted-use 50% discount ticket for students age 13-18 currently enrolled in high or middle school
• BART Plus ? special high-value ticket with 'flash-pass' privileges with regional transit agencies, including MUNI's buses.
• EZ Rider ? A new plastic smart card fare program that will eventually be replaced by the TransLink Phase II Program

EZ Rider Fare Card

Unlike most transit systems in the United States, but like the MRT in Singapore, BART does not have an unlimited ride pass available and riders must pay for each ride they take. The only discount provided to the public is a 6.25% discount when "high value tickets" are purchased with fare values of $48 and $64, for prices of $45 and $60 respectively. Amtrak's Capitol Corridor & San Joaquins trains sell $10 BART tickets on-board in the café cars for only $8,^[29][30] resulting in a 20% discount. A 62.5% discount is provided to seniors, the disabled, and children age 5 to 12. Middle and high school students 13 to 18 may obtain a 50% discount if their school participates in the BART program; however, these tickets are intended to be used only between the students' home station and the school's station and for transportation to and from school events. However, these intended limitations are not enforced in any way and students are expected to behave on the honor system. The tickets are only usable on weekdays, a restriction that is enforced by the fare gates. BART Plus tickets enjoy a last-ride bonus where if the remaining value is greater than $.05, the ticket can be used one last time for a trip of any distance. Most special discounted tickets must be purchased at selected vendors and not at ticket machines. The Bart Plus tickets can be purchased at the ticket machines. In particular, the middle and high school tickets are usually sold at the schools themselves.

Family members of BART employees receive special BART passes and can ride free-of-charge upon showing their pass and photo identification to the BART station attendant. Employees of airlines that take BART to work at San Francisco International Airport receive a fare discount of 25%, but non-airline employees who do the same receive no discount.

Ticket gates with the orange triangular doors retracted for a Spare the Air Day

There is little fare coordination between BART and surrounding agencies. Some agencies accept the BART Plus pass, which at a fee of between $38 and $71 per month, permits pass holders to use BART and connecting buses. Most notably, AC Transit dropped out of the program due to the small amount of reimbursement they received from BART. Another fare coordination program permits adult monthly pass holders of the San Francisco Municipal Railway to ride BART trains within the city of San Francisco for free (with no credit applied to trips outside the city). The city of San Francisco pays BART $.87 for each trip taken under this arrangement.^[31] For riders who do not hold such passes, there is generally only a token discount ($.25 to $.50) provided to passengers transferring to and from trains to other transit modes. The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority does honor BART transfers for a local fare credit ($.50 to $1.75) towards the 120, 140, 180 and 181 trans-county express lines departing the Fremont BART station, but all riders are required to disembark in Santa Clara County. There is no credit applied when traveling towards the Fremont BART Station.

Proposals to simplify the fare structure abound. At one extreme, a flat fare that disregards distance has been proposed by BART director Joel Keller. The lesser extreme involves the implementation of a simplified structure that would create fare bands or zones. The implementation of either scheme would demote the use of distance-based fares and shift the fare-box recovery burden to the urban riders in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley and away from the suburban riders of East Contra Costa, Southern Alameda, and San Mateo Counties, where density is lowest, and consequently, operational cost is highest.^[32]

Budget

In 2005, BART required nearly $300 million in subsidies after fares. About 37% of the costs went to maintenance, 29% to actual transportation operations, 24% to general administration, 8% to police services, and 4% to construction and engineering. In 2005, 53% of the budget was derived from fares, 32% from taxes, and 15% from other sources, including advertising, station retail space leasing, and parking fees.^[33] BART's farebox recovery ratio of 53% is relatively high for a U.S. public transit agency operating over such long distances with high frequency (for comparison, see the article on farebox recovery).

History

The idea of an underwater electric rail tube was first proposed in the early 1900s by Francis "Borax" Smith. It is no coincidence that much of BART's current coverage area was once served by the electrified streetcar and suburban train network called the Key System. This early twentieth century system once had regular trans-bay traffic across the lower deck of the Bay Bridge. By the 1950s the entire system had been dismantled in favor of automobiles and buses and the explosive growth of highway construction. The new system to take its place was floated around in the late 1940s and the first passenfer service began in 1972. Over the years, the system has had its share of ups and downs, and some firsts for mass transit in the United States.

Future expansion and extension

Expansion projects for the Bay Area Rapid Transit have existed ever since the opening of the project. These projects include the Warm Springs extension, the San Jose extension, the Oakland Airport Connector, eBART, 'tBART': I-580/Tri-Valley Corridor, 'wBART': I-80/West Contra Costa Corridor, and numerous infill stations along the route.

BART compared with other rail transit systems

BART, like other transit systems of the same era, endeavored to connect outlying suburbs with job centers in Oakland and San Francisco by building out lines that paralleled established commute routes of the region's freeway system. The majority of BART's service area, as measured by percentage of system length, consists of low-density suburbs. Unlike the New York City Subway or the London Underground, individual BART lines were not designed to provide frequent local service, as evidenced by the system's current maximum achievable headway of 13.33 minutes per line through the quadruple interlined section. Muni provides local light-rail and subway service within San Francisco city limits and runs with smaller headways than does BART. BART could in many ways be characterized as a "commuter subway," since it has many characteristics of a commuter rail system, including lengthy lines that extend to the far reaches of suburbia with significant distances between most adjacent stations. However, in the urban areas of San Francisco and downtown Oakland, multiple lines converge, and BART takes on the characteristics of an urban subway, including short headways and transfer opportunities to other lines.

Many of the suburban stations?particularly those in Contra Costa County, southern Alameda County, and San Mateo County?have park and ride facilities. These stations are spaced two or more miles (3 km) apart and offer free or subsidized parking; thus many lots are filled to capacity for the morning commute. To augment its revenues, BART charges for parking at select stations; however, the agency has garnered criticism that its parking fees are too heavily subsidized and are thus significantly below the market-clearing rate, as evidenced by the capital outlays of building an individual parking space at between $15,000 and $39,000 per space.^[34][35] A unique feature of BART parking is that parking fees are paid, not upon exiting the lot, but immediately after passing through the fare gates and just prior to entering the train platform areas.

As such, some sources consider BART to be more of a regional commuter rail service, such as the Berlin S-Bahn or the Paris RER.^[36] However, BART also possesses all the qualities and services of a metro system, including electrified third-rail propulsion, exclusive grade-separated right-of-way, frequent headways in its urban service areas, and pre-paid fare card access. Urban stations are as close as one-half mile (800 m) apart and have combined 2.5- to 5-minute service intervals at peak times. These factors contribute to the consideration of BART as a hybrid metro-commuter system, functioning as a metro in the central business districts of San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, and as commuter rail in the region's suburban areas.

Recent news

A recent study shows that along with some Bay Area freeways, some of BART's overhead structures could be extensively damaged and could potentially collapse in the event of a major earthquake, which is predicted as highly likely to happen in the Bay Area within the next 30 years.^[37] Extensive seismic retrofit will be necessary to address many of these deficiencies, although one in particular, the penetration of the Hayward Fault Zone by the Berkeley Hills Tunnel, will be left for correction after any disabling earthquake, with the consequences for in-transit trains, their operators, and their passengers left to chance.

By November 2005, BART had become the first transit system in the nation to offer cellular communication to passengers of all wireless carriers on its trains underground.^[38] As of summer 2006, service is available for customers of Verizon Wireless, Sprint/Nextel, AT&T Mobility, and T-Mobile in and between the four San Francisco Market Street stations from Civic Center to Embarcadero.^[39] This is in contrast to other systems in US, which, while having some cellular service, do not provide it for passengers of all the major cell phone carriers. Coverage is eventually planned for the entire system, with coverage for the segment between Balboa Park and 16th St. Mission by the middle of 2007 and between Lake Merritt and 19th St./Oakland some time after that. By July 2008 the fifth cell phone network of the Bay Area MetroPCS was added, in addition of service at the 16th Street, 24th Street, and Balboa Park stations.^[40] Service will be added to the 12th and 19th street stations in downtown Oakland in 2009.^[40]

Since the mid 1990s, BART has been trying to modernize its aging 30-year-old system. The aforementioned fleet rehabilitation is part of this modernization; presently, fire alarms, water-sprinkling systems, yellow tactile platform edge domes, and cemented-mat rubber tiles are being installed. The rough black tiles on the platform edge mark the location of the doorway of approaching trains, allowing passengers to wait at the appropriate locations for the train, instead of waiting until the train arrives to figure out where to board. All faregates and ticket vending machines have also been completely replaced. BART'S original Ticket machines had Nixie Tube Displays to show the amount of money inserted into the machine.

On April 10, 2007, BART General Manager Tom Margro, who has been BART chief for eleven years, announced his retirement.^[41]

In late May, 2007, BART stated its intention to improve non-peak (night and weekend) headways for each line to only 15 minutes. The current 20-minute headways at these times is viewed as a psychological barrier to ridership.^[42] June 2007, BART temporarily reversed its position stating that the shortened wait times would likely not happen due to a $900,000 state revenue budget shortfall. Nevertheless, BART eventually confirmed the implementation of the plan by January 1, 2008.^[43]

Furthermore, in June 2007, BART suddenly removed all references to implementation of the TransLink payment system from their website. BART spokesperson Marty Moran stated (via email) that TransLink now may be implemented as early as late 2007.^[44] Implementation of TransLink on BART was pushed back even further due to disputes regarding the processing of fares between MTC and BART. TransLink was planned to be rolled out simultaneously on BART, SF Muni, and Caltrain in Spring 2008,^[45], although as of August 2008, TransLink service is still not supported.

As BART celebrated the 50th anniversary of its creation by the state legislature, it announced its plans for the next 50 years. Its vision includes adding a four-bore transbay tube beneath San Francisco Bay that would run parallel and south of the existing tunnel and emerge at the Transbay Transit Terminal to provide connecting service to Caltrain and the proposed future California High Speed Rail system. The four-bore tunnel would provide two tunnels for BART and two tunnels for conventional/high-speed rail. BART's plan focus on improving service and reliability in its core system (where density and ridership is highest), rather than extensions into far-flung suburbia. These plans include: a line that would continue from the Transbay Terminal through the South-of-Market, northwards on Van Ness and terminating in western San Francisco along the Geary corridor, the Presidio, or North Beach; a line along the I-680 corridor; a fourth set of tracks through Oakland.^[46]

BART recently detailed their upcoming service changes,^[47] beginning January 1, 2008. Among the changes, the Pittsburg/Bay Point line will extend to the SFO station (at all hours of operation), but will not continue to Millbrae. (A few red eye Pittsburg/Bay Point trains will extend to Millbrae in addition to serving SFO). During weekdays (excluding nights), the Richmond line will extend to the Millbrae station (bypassing the SFO station); during weeknights and weekends, the Dublin/Pleasanton line will extend to Millbrae (also bypassing SFO). This does mean that there will no longer be a direct connection between the airport and Millbrae, introducing an inconvenience for Caltrain system passengers wishing to travel to SFO. BART discontinued this citing low ridership between Millbrae and SFO, however they claim that there will be timed transfers at the San Bruno station for passengers connecting from SFO to Millbrae. Additionally, there will be a 5.4% fare increase, with the minimum fare increasing from $1.40 to $1.50.

In 2008 BART announced that it would install solar power systems on the roofs of its train yards and maintenance facilities in Richmond and Hayward in addition to car ports with rooftop solar panels at its Orinda station.^[48] The board lamented not being able to install them at all stations but it stated that Orinda was the only station with enough sun for them to make money from the project.^[48]

BART Police shooting of Oscar Grant III

Screen shot from eyewitness video of incident

On January 1, 2009, at about 2:15 a.m., 27 year-old BART police officer Johannes Mehserle unholstered his service weapon and fatally shot an unarmed man, Oscar Grant III, the back as he was detained by BART Police in a face-down position on a train platform at the Fruitvale BART Station in Oakland.^[49] The bullet entered Grant's back then exited through his front side before ricocheting off the concrete floor of the platform and punctured Grant's lung. Grant died several hours later from his gunshot wounds.

BART Police attempted to confiscate cell phone video cameras used by other passengers to record the incident and initially claimed that security cameras didn't record the incident. The district has subsequently been forced to admit that the security cameras did capture the shooting.^[50]

The news story, to include video of the incident and shooting recorded by other riders at the scene, has been reported by, and broadcast on regional, national^[51], international^[52], and internet news media.^[53] KTVU reported on January 5, 2009 that there is a third cell phone video of the shooting with a different angle of the shooting.

Oakland Civil Rights attorney John Burris, who has been retained by Grant's family, has filed a $25 million wrongful death lawsuit suit against the District. ^[54][55][56]

Five days after the shooting, the BART officer who killed Grant has yet to be questioned or interviewed by BART Police Internal Affairs investigators, or to the Alameda County District Attorney's office, which is conducting its own independent investigation of the incident.^[57]

Organization management

General Manager

Chief Spokesperson

See also

• List of Bay Area Rapid Transit stations
• List of rapid transit systems
• List of United States rapid transit systems by ridership
• List of California railroads

References

External links

• BART - official website
• Engineering Geology of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) System, 1964-75
• BART Map/Schedule Map/Schedule using Google Maps API
• BART widget, a self-contained trip planner for Mac OS X Dashboard
• BARTsmart Another BART Widget, featuring BART schedules and news
• Map of BART and rail network in simplified diagrammatic, rather than geographically accurate
• iSubwayMaps.com iPod, alternative predating official BART offering (map only)
• Typographica ? BART Wayfinding ? October 8, 2005 ? article about typography of BART signage
• Shuttles serving BART stations at 511.org
• Pictures of BART on world.nycsubway.org

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