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November 20, 2009

More BART parking for holiday airport travelers

BART is nearly doubling the number of Airport/Long-Term parking spaces this Thanksgiving season and is urging the public to purchase parking permits early as the agency expects a heavy demand from people who are getting ready to fly out of town.  Permits are available now, but only online at www.bart.gov/parking. BART does not sell permits at stations.

"BART is a popular connection to both San Francisco and Oakland International airports and it’s even more convenient with the affordable parking spaces we’re offering to people traveling this Thanksgiving," BART Board President Thomas Blalock said.  "While our first priority is to our daily customers, we know that many of our regular riders aren’t using BART during the holiday season, therefore we are able to provide hundreds of additional spaces for airport travelers."
    
540 ADDITIONAL AIRPORT/LONG-TERM SPACES
Beginning Wednesday, November 25 through Monday, November 30, BART is setting aside an additional 540 spaces system-wide for Airport/Long-Term parking, bringing the total spaces for Airport/Long-Term parking to 1435. Airport/Long-Term parking is available at all East Bay stations with parking lots (excluding West Oakland and Coliseum/Oakland Airport stations) for $5/day.  Peninsula stations with available Airport/Long-Term parking are Colma, San Bruno and Millbrae. Permits there cost $6/day.  BART Airport/Long-Term parking rates are a much better deal than airport parking fees, which are as high as $20/day. Drivers who do not have Airport/Long-Term parking permits are subject to the 24-hour weekday time limit on parking in all BART lots. The fine for violating this provision is $100. First-time customers can learn how to purchase a ticket by watching Malou Nubla’s segment on how to buy an Airport/Long-Term parking permit on BARTtv News at www.BART.gov/BARTtv. 

BEST TO PARK BEFORE 10:00 A.M.
BART guarantees customers an Airport/Long-Term parking spot if they get to the parking lot before 10:00 a.m.  After 10:00 a.m., customers can park in any available space, but BART cannot guarantee Airport/Long-term permit holders a spot when they arrive.
  
PARKING RULES IN EFFECT ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27
BART considers Friday, November 27 a normal weekday and BART Police will enforce all parking regulations.  Vehicles parked over the four day weekend without an Airport/Long-Term permit will be subject to the $100 fine. The additional Airport/Long-Term spaces will be available from Wednesday, November 25 through Monday, November 30 and again from Friday, December 18, through Sunday, January 3, 2010.

Image credit: BART SFO Station by blmurch via Flickr

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November 12, 2009

Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittehs...

Do you have some favorite things around BART stations? We’re looking for suggestions to include in feature stories about destinations and as tips from SFBART on Foursquare, the location-based social network that we’re partnering with on promotions. (Read more about that here).

We’re looking for things to do that are…

  • Within easy walking distance from a BART station.
  • A good mix – food, music, books, parks, theater, historic sites, unusual or interesting destinations
  • Free or inexpensive.
  • “Insider info” – not just where to go, but the good stuff that only the locals or regulars know – what to order that’s not on the menu, which day is the least crowded, how to get that half-off special ...  if you’re willing to share!
  • Easily described in a sentence or two.
  • Ongoing - not just a one-time event.

We won’t be able to use every suggestion, but will try to mix them up over time and get in as many as possible. Email your tips to sfbartmail@gmail.com

Image credit: Photo by Sapphiren via Flickr

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November 11, 2009

Real time Muni info for shared stations on bart.gov

The BART website now provides real time SF Muni Metro arrivals for shared BART/Muni Metro stations in downtown San Francisco, including Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell, Civic Center, Glen Park and Balboa Park. The arrivals are conveniently listed next to BART ETAs on the main BART website and the mobile BART website (m.bart.gov).

On Saturday, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) released real time Muni arrivals to developers. BART is one of the first to use the new data feed.

"It's exciting to see another Bay Area transit agency open up real time data," said BART website manager, Timothy Moore. "BART and Muni are providing a model for how transit agencies can share real time data with the public and each other. I can't wait to see the innovations that result."

Since 2007, BART has provided free and open transit data to third-party developers, spawning dozens of innovative web and mobile applications for BART customers.  BART's open data initiatives have served as an example for other innovative programs across the country including Data SF and the MassDot Developer's Page.

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November 2, 2009

As bridge opens, BART studies new rider feedback

Yep, it is definitely time for us all to take our experiences this past Bay Bridge-less week, examine them and work toward better solutions for getting people where they need to go in the Bay Area. Here's one piece of what we're doing at BART:

Now that the Bay Bridge has reopened, BART is studying ridership data and feedback from new and infrequent riders, in hopes of attracting them to take public transit on a regular basis.

BART saw record ridership during the emergency bridge closure, suggesting that many Bay Area residents can take public transit when the bridge is out -- but for various reasons don’t do so regularly under normal conditions.

On Wednesday, the first full day of the emergency bridge closure, BART began an online survey aimed at finding out more about those reasons. The survey will close at the end of business Tuesday, Nov. 3, so if you used BART during the bridge closure, there's still time to submit your feedback.

Around 1,500 people responded to the survey, which was posted on the homepage of BART’s website and promoted through social web channels including @SFBART on Twitter, the SFBART blog and Facebook fan page. Although anyone could take the survey, analysis will focus on the responses from first-time or infrequent riders.

Suggestions given in verbatim, open-ended comments for what would get people to ride BART more frequently included: expanding service, improving parking availability at stations, making machines easier to use, ensuring announcements and signage are clear, keeping trains clean and providing more police presence. BART will dig deeper into the statistical data from questions about trip origins, destinations and frequency.

“This data gives us great insight into people’s decisions,” said Steve Beroldo, BART Principal Research Analyst “It will help us to address the concerns they raise and, we hope, eventually see more of these occasional riders become regular riders.”

Getting more people out of their cars and onto trains is good not only for BART, but also for reducing environmental impacts of highway congestion, he said. For example, during the first two full days of the bridge closure on Wednesday and Thursday, BART estimated that riders took 163,000 extra BART trips. If they had driven vehicles for those trips, the trips would have resulted in about 1.8 million pounds of CO2 emissions.

Some customers commented that the potential flip side of increased ridership is crowded trains and filled parking lots at BART stations – which in turn can deter people from taking transit. During the emergency closure many people made adjustments to mitigate those problems, but in the long term, finding funds to increase BART capacity will be important to meet future demand.

Riders heeded advice to stagger their travel to avoid the “peak of the peak” of rush-hour commutes, generally between 7 a.m. – 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. – 6 p.m. With many employers amenable to flexible scheduling, workers came in early or started late, spreading the load out over more hours. Many also found ways to get dropped off at stations, take a bus, carpool or walk in groups to stations, or bike to stations with folding bikes that can be taken on trains at any time.

During the emergency bridge closure, BART had the challenging job of optimizing train capacity while ensuring reliability and time for necessary maintenance. It’s a big concern with an aging fleet, which includes many cars that were first put in service when BART opened back in 1972. Transportation supervisors are like maestros conducting a symphony, adding cars to trains or even extra trains when possible, watching passenger loads in real time, ensuring planned maintenance and also responding on the fly to unexpected conditions – like the power outage Oct. 27 at South Hayward.

BART will study the customer survey feedback, along with data from a similar survey done during the scheduled Bay Bridge closure over Labor Day weekend, to look for feasible ideas for action. The hope is for more customers like the one who responded to the survey by saying: Taking BART is “a smart alternative. I may do this again in the future!”

BART has many resources available for new customers thinking about sticking with transit, including:

• Information on commuter tax benefits
• High-value discount tickets
• Reserved parking system
• Real-time arrival information
• Information pages about each of the 43 stations
• Free personalized trip planning by phone

 Image credit: Image above is of tweet by @matokie on Twitter. 

 

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October 31, 2009

BART runs limited overnight service on Halloween

Due to the Bay Bridge closure, BART will run limited overnight service on an hourly schedule to 14 stations on Halloween, Saturday night into Sunday morning. However, there WILL NOT be overnight service Sunday night into Monday morning, no matter whether the bridge remains closed. That's because BART must perform many state-mandated safety inspections and conduct vital maintenance to ensure the safety and reliability of Monday morning's commute. For all the details, including the complete schedule and list of stations, go to our main website at www.bart.gov.

Image credit: Waiting for BART on Halloween 2005, by Steve Rhodes via Flickr (Check out all his Halloween sets; they are great)

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October 30, 2009

BART sets ridership record - again

The race is on! Kind of fitting during World Series and election time to have this horse-race element to watching BART ridership numbers. Everybody seems to love lists and races and superlatives. 

So, for you number-watchers, let it be noted that Thursday broke Wednesday's record for BART's highest-ridership day ever. On Thursday, the second full day of the Bay Bridge emergency closure, there were 442,000 riders. (Full story here on our main website). On Wednesday there were 437,200 riders, blasting past the previous record of 405,400, set on Sept. 8, 2008. That day in 2008 was a rather routine Monday. There were two pro sports games that night, Raiders and Giants, accounting for some riders. Another explanation suggested is that the economy was more robust and more people were working. But the bridge was open and a whole lot of people still rode BART. The next two highest-ridership days were for a scheduled Bay Bridge closure and a Spare the Air Day when there were free rides. 

Spare the Air is probably safe in its position in the Top 5, because today is following the typical "Friday light" pattern of fewer riders than other weekdays, generally chalked up to people taking three-day weekends. Numbers are below Thursdays, although still higher than a typical Friday.

What does it all MEAN??? Well, it's great to see more new riders giving public transit a try, and BART is working hard to handle the extra load and give the newcomers (and regular riders) a good experience. See the latest story on our main website here for what we're doing. There have been a few problems and inconveniences along the way, but we've also seen reports of incredible patience and helpfulness among riders to each other. So, thank you for bearing with us. Send us your anecdotes at webadmin@bart.gov. 

Image credit: Paolo Camera via Flickr. 

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October 28, 2009

Loving the regulars, welcoming the newbies

In your 10 a.m. Wednesday Bay Bridge Closure/BART update....

* Early reports from riders on how things are going this first workday of the bridge closure ranged from "not so bad" to "a hot mess," so it's varying a lot by station. 

* We expect an official update on ridership numbers sometime after 10:30 a.m. and will post it on our main website (where you can find all the latest news).

* We have an online survey posted now aimed especially at new riders -- helping us get insight into how new or infrequent riders are using BART and what might encourage them to keep riding, even after the bridge reopens. 

We love our regulars and appreciate your patience with the newbies! Have seen quite a few messages like the one above with people poking fun at those new to the system. But people are also pitching in to help others out, showing them how to use the faregates or helping them to find their stop. Give 'em a break!

Anyone can take the survey and be entered to win a $100 gift card. 

Expect more updates here later. 

Tip of the hat to Connor T. McDonald for the tweet in the image above. 

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October 27, 2009

BART expands service during Bay Bridge closure

BART is making contingency plans to handle extra passengers anticipated if the Bay Bridge closure continues through Wednesday.

Caltrans closed the bridge in both directions Tuesday evening after pieces of the cantilever section fell during the late-afternoon commute, and officials were assessing the damage. It was not immediately known how long the bridge would remain closed, but Bay Area commuters have been urged to make contingency plans.

BART is keeping longer trains running throughout regularly scheduled service this evening, Chief Spokesperson Linton Johnson said. Train lengths are typically adjusted shorter late into the evening hours, after the bulk of the peak afternoon commute is over. However, all available cars are being used during the closure. BART provided extra 24-hour service over the Labor Day weekend when the Bay Bridge was closed for earthquake retrofit work, but will not run overnight service early Wednesday, October 28th.

Extra train operators are being called in for duty on Wednesday, in anticipation of a higher passenger load, Johnson said. "We will use every available extra train car we have,"  Johnson said.

Because there may be a more riders than usual tomorrow, you may want to plan ahead:

  • New to BART? Haven't been in a while?
    Check out the BART rider guide to familiarize yourself with the service, and use the BART QuickPlanner to plan your trip.
  • Get a ride to the station
    Parking will be extremely tight at all BART stations with parking. Consider carpooling or getting dropped off at the station. Consider using Park and Ride lots on your commute route.
  • Bicycle
    Ride your bike to BART, but be sure you understand BART's Bike Rules beforehand. You will not be able to bring a bicycle on commute trains. The East Bay Bicycle Coalition and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition have helpful information available on biking to work, maps of bike routes and safety tips.

The BART website is your best source of official, accurate information about BART service. Sign up for official BART news updates or follow a BART RSS feed or @SFBART to keep up with the latest.

 

 

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October 27, 2009

Snake advert explained

We're here at your service, tracking down answers to questions from curious BART riders. Recently we heard some puzzlement over a poster campaign in stations featuring a snake, with multilingual text (Chinese on some and Korean on some), and no obvious product reference to know what was being advertised if you couldn't read the language. As one rider put it, "What's the deal with these BART ads with the green backgrounds and snakes menacing inattentive Asian men?"

It turns out the advertisement is for a Bristol-Myers Squibb pharmaceutical product to treat hepatitis B, and the messaging is roughly translated as "don't turn your back on chronic hepatitis B."  The campaign is scheduled to end this week. Meanwhile, always glad to see customers are noticing the ads in BART, since those ads bring in revenue to help run the system! 

Image above is taken from the website for the campaign (which has versions in multiple languages including English). 

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October 22, 2009

BART partners with Foursquare

Take one up-and-coming location-based mobile city guide for urban dwellers who like technology, exploring, good food, nightlife and fun....

Pair with a tech-savvy transit system (what other transpo has all the developer services, real-time info, mobile web, push advisories, pull advisories, Twitter, Facebook, blog) in one of America's great urban centers for culture, cuisine, natural beauty and environmental awareness supporting public transit...

Whaddya get? A Foursquare-BART partnership!

Bay Area Rapid Transit has become the first transit agency to partner with the location-based mobile network Foursquare, with the goal of encouraging public transit use.

Foursquare (profiled this week in the New York Times) combines social networking elements with game mechanics, urging users to explore neighborhoods and recommend places to others. You can check in from different venues and earn badges and points for doing different types of things – like a "gym rat" badge if you check in 10 times at a gym during a 30-day period. As part of the partnership with BART, Foursquare will offer a BART-themed badge that can be unlocked by regular riders of BART, which provides train service in the San Francisco Bay Area. BART will award $25 promotional tickets each month for the next three months to riders chosen at random from all the riders who have logged Foursquare check-ins at BART stations, starting in November.

One popular element of Foursquare is a competition to become "mayor" of different places. If you check in more than anyone else, you claim rights as "the mayor" of that place. Regular BART riders already are trading back and forth as "mayors" of the 43 stations. Foursquare updates are shared across other social networking and microblogging sites such as Facebook and Twitter, announcing who has ousted whom as mayor. BART also will look at other ways to coordinate promotions with new and existing venue partners, through www.mybart.org, its free service offering contests and discounts for entertainment, sports and other events. BART is listing tips for things to do near BART stations on its Foursquare profile page (www.foursquare.com/user/SFBART). 

BART will also select tips for things to do near BART stations that other Foursquare users recommend, and include them in the "to-do" list on its Foursquare profile. If you want yours considered, be sure to mention that the venue is close to a BART station, and list the name of the station in your tip. 

"A lot of BART riders are already having fun with this game," said Timothy Moore, BART website manager. "We hope this partnership will encourage them to check out different stations and neighborhoods, and will show people who aren't already BART riders some of the great things to do that are easy to get to on transit."

"We're excited about the potential for Foursquare to influence people's actions and decisions beyond things like entertainment, into broader areas, like taking public transit or getting involved in their communities," said Dennis Crowley, Foursquare's co-founder.  Crowley announced the partnership at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Thursday.

For more information on Foursquare go to www.foursquare.com.

Image: Icons for four different Foursquare badges. BART-themed badge design adapted with permission from iBART.

Filed under  //   BART   Foursquare   location-based services  

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