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December 8, 2009

Extended hours, special service for New Year's Eve

Let BART help you ring in the new year. BART will extend service until 3 a.m. on New Year’s Eve to help get you home from your festivities.

In addition to normal evening service with trains every 20 minutes, BART will run special service into and out of San Francisco on New Year’s Eve. The special service is designed to ease crowding at Embarcadero and Montgomery Street stations resulting from the large number of people attending the fireworks show in downtown San Francisco.

Beginning at 8 p.m., trains on the Pittsburg/Bay Point and Richmond lines will not stop at Embarcadero station. The San Francisco stop closest to the fireworks show for customers on the Pittsburg/Bay Point and Richmond lines will be Montgomery Street. Trains on the Dublin/Pleasanton and Fremont lines will stop at Embarcadero Station but not at Montgomery Street. Trains from Millbrae and Daly City will make all stops in San Francisco.

After the fireworks end, passengers boarding trains bound for Pittsburg/Bay Point and Richmond must use Montgomery Street Station. Again, trains on the Pittsburg/Bay Point and Richmond lines will not stop at Embarcadero Station on their way out of San Francisco. Passengers boarding trains on the Dublin/Pleasanton and Fremont lines must use Embarcadero Station, as trains heading to Dublin/Pleasanton and Fremont will not stop at Montgomery Street Station. Millbrae and Daly City bound trains will make all stops, but BART recommends passengers on those lines use Montgomery Street Station

BART is making these changes to try to ease overcrowding at Embarcadero Station by better distributing riders between Montgomery and Embarcadero Stations. Additional "event" trains will be standing by to carry riders home during the busiest time when the fireworks end.

BART will not be selling New Year’s Eve flash passes this year.  For maximum convenience, buy a round-trip ticket before you start your trip.  That way you can avoid lines at ticket vending machines on your way home.

On New Year’s Day, Friday, January 1, BART will operate on a Holiday/Sunday schedule with service beginning at 8 a.m.

Tips to help keep BART running smoothly on New Year’s Eve

* Buy a round-trip ticket before you start your trip, that way you can avoid lines at ticket vending machines on your way home.
* Just after midnight is the busiest time on New Year's Eve at BART’s downtown San Francisco stations, especially Embarcadero. Avoid the rush by leaving San Francisco a little earlier or staying later. BART will run until 3 a.m. on New Year's Eve.
* If you must leave San Francisco right after the fireworks end, remember that Pittsburg/Bay Point and Richmond riders must use Montgomery Street Station and Dublin/Pleasanton and Fremont riders must use Embarcadero Station.
* As always, there is no eating, drinking or smoking in BART stations or on BART trains.
* Remember to stay safely behind the yellow platform edge tiles.
* Once train doors begin closing, stay clear of the doors and do not attempt to hold the doors open.
* Bicycles are not allowed in crowded stations or on crowded trains.
*  If you are in need of emergency assistance, contact a BART employee, use the intercom on each train car or call 911.
* If you do drink on New Year's Eve, please remember to drink responsibly.
* If you have parked your car at a BART station, please be sure to have a designated driver to get you home safely.

Happy holidays and thank you for riding BART.

Image credit: Fireworks over San Francisco's financial district taken on Jan. 1, 2006, by angela7dreams via Flickr. 

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December 4, 2009

Win tickets to preview James Cameron's "Avatar"

Want to be among the first to see "Avatar," the new film from James Cameron, Oscar-winning director of "Titanic"? Get details at www.mybart.org on how to enter for a chance to win one of 50 pairs of tickets being given away for a preview screening on Thursday, Dec. 17, in San Francisco.

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December 3, 2009

BART seeks public input on new police chief

An online survey is now available to provide input on the qualities and experience desired for the new BART Chief of Police.

BART invites the public to take an online survey designed to give us input on the qualities and experience desired as we prepare to hire a new Chief of Police.  Click here to take the survey.

The survey will be available until close of business on January 7, 2010. At that time, the results of the survey will be compiled and provided as input to the selection process.

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December 2, 2009

November Foursquare/BART promo winners named

Congratulations to the November winners of our BART/Foursquare promotion: @java81, @jlapenna and @cvf007!

We’re picking three winners at random from all the people who use Foursquare, the location-based social network, to check in at BART stations in November, December and January. They win $25 BART tickets.

If you’re not familiar with Foursquare, you can read more about it in the story about our partnership here, or sign up to start using it at www.foursquare.com.

Basically we’re hoping to encourage people to use public transportation more frequently, by making it fun through the game mechanics of Foursquare and pointing out tips for interesting things to do that are close to BART stations. 

Foursquare users checked in at BART stations more than 5,000 times in November, and 110 of them unlocked the BART-themed “Trainspotter” badge for frequent ridership.

”I check-in whenever I'm on BART,” @java81 said. “I'm using Foursquare to see where friends are and lately we've become very competitive with how many badges we get. I think if there were any way for BART Foursquare users to unlock ‘secret’ BART badges for different stops, i.e. a Mission badge or even a BART crawl special event badge, that'd be *really* awesome.”

If you have suggestions for us, send them to webadmin@bart.gov

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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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