The Space Age Metro System | Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)

I really appreciate that you recognized that BART isn't really a "metro" as it's usually defined but rather suburban rapid transit similar to Crossrail or the RER

BART is the system I grew up with. It's space-age qualities for the time are why I fell in love with trains and transit systems. The ride under the bay was always my favorite part. FAST! BART platforms have marks where the doors are and people line up at those marks. This is an important BART feature. The unusual thing about this that I haven't seen on other systems is that the flashing destination signs would always tell you if the approaching train was a 10-car or 8-car train so you know where to stand. Now, w the new 3 door cars, the destination signs will also indicate if the approaching train is 2-door or 3-door so you know which marks to line up behind. You can see it in this video on some of the station footage.

Nice, as an SF resident who just got off a BART train about an hour ago I'm a fan, but I really wish they would expand the network, fix connections to other transit, and most importantly have much more frequent service. Coming home tonight the trains were only running with a half hour headway, even on the trunk.

I've travelled to the Bay Area only once in the last 10 years, in 2019, a visit that I oriented around BART. This turned out to be an excellent idea: I flew into Oakland (instead of SFO), took the Coliseum-Airport shuttle, took BART and a short bus ride to a much cheaper stay in Oakland, and then used BART to maximize my exploration of the Bay Area over just a few days. If Bay Area politicians could orient more developments and amenities around it, the potential would be huge. I'm surprised they didn't take a hint from the 1989 earthquake, which I recall also damaged and caused permanent closure of several elevated highways, while BART's elevated guideways came out unscathed! (A good indicator for SkyTrain? 🤔)

One note: You said that Caltrain doesn’t yet go downtown SF. I see what you mean as BART goes to the heart of downtown under market street, but I would call Caltrain’s 4th and King station downtown, and as someone who takes Caltrain into the city all the the time it’s much more common for me to go all the way in on Caltrain then transfer to muni as opposed to transferring to BART at Millbrae.

Great video. I worked on the first phase of the BART extensions in the early 1990’s and learned some interesting BART lore at the time. BART was originally designed in the 1960’s. At that time in the United States, optimism about technology was at its peak. The space race was in full swing, the country was going to the moon, and technology would be able to solve any technical problem. BART was envisioned as a fully automated system, and to compete with the growing popularity or the automobile, it would be designed with space age and futuristic trains with spacious cars, comfortable seats, and large and airy stations all to avoid the reputation at the time of the dark, dreary and crowded older subway and transit systems in cities such as New York, Chicago and Boston. Since downtown San Francisco was the economic engine at the time, and the perceived destination of most of the riders, it was designed so that all three branches on the East Bay would be able to take a direct train into San Francisco without switching trains, necessitating a very complicated route path through downtown Oakland and timing synchronization so that they could all go through the transbay team without backing each other up. Teething problems in its first few years, including a fire in 1979 in the transbay tube that killed a firefighter, sullied its reputation, but overall it’s been a great asset to the Bay Area and has really set the area apart from less transit friendly areas on the US West Coast such as Los Angeles and Seattle.

1:55 A signaling system problem BART encountered in its early days was "ghost trains". Trains early in the morning would randomly disappear then reappear on the dispatcher's display at the Lake Merritt Control Center. A university professor investigated and found that fog caused a thin layer of rust to form on the track, preventing the signal's electrical voltage from shunting between the rails thru the wheel assembly as usual.

A cool topic to cover would BARTS expansion to Vallejo, Fairfield, and Vacaville. It was a movement in the early 2000s but the movement really died when Hercules decided to get a fairy building instead of bart. Cool history and would be greatly needed! I would love to see this idea resurface or at least a shout of in a future bart video!

I love BART. I grew up on it, mostly riding between Berkeley, SF, and Oakland. My favorite part about it is the accessibility. Every single station is accessible with zero help required in the way of a driver putting down ramps or lifts. The train is flush enough with the platform that I roll right in, with a manual or power chair, and there is plenty of room inside a car to move to wherever i want, "disability area" or elsewhere. all this means l I have the freedom to ride public transit'': -without having to talk to anyone - without having to fear that equipment is broken down and I won't be able to ride (elevators do go down sometimes but it's usually very few and there's up-to-date elevator advisories both announced and on the app) -with total freedom to make last-minute changes of plan (bus and light rail drivers usually demand to know what stop you're getting off at) -without being tied down, which has made me very vulnerable to harassment on buses and is a very awkward process -without dealing with irritated passengers about how slow I'm making their transit trip It's great. I can simply get on any train at any door as soon as they open, hang out without having to do wheelchair securements, and leave when I want to, and I am much safer from abuse and assaut because of this good design.

I lived in the San Francisco area for 6 years and took BART almost every day. I go back to visit a few times a year, and I continue to take BART every time I visit.

It's funny and insightful how you tie Montreal's REM to the lessons we learned from BART. There's actually a Montreal-Bay Area-Montreal bookend story there: Montreal's metro opened in advance of Expo '67 as the one of North America's first truly "modern" (post-WWII) subways. BART pushed some of this frontier technology farther with its unprecedented reliance on computers for operations, and enlisted some engineers fresh from Montreal in its design and roll-out work in the late 1960s and early 70s. I agree that BART is more like the RER or a commuter rail for the region, but it is truly a commuter-metro hybrid in that the section you highlight at 6:10, with BART's most intensely multi-layered service clear between West Oakland and Daly City. For riders traveling entirely between these two stations - the San Francisco segment - BART is truly a "metro" with close station spacings connected at high frequencies. Oakland-Berkeley-San Leandro get a less-frequent version of wider-spaced metro service between their stations (especially between MacArthur, West Oakland and Bay Fair), and the rest of the region gets a more typical commuter rail service.

Living in SF, it would be so much harder to get anywhere without Bart. Plus they go up to 80mph very often on their routes and they have a fairly frequent schedule now.

BART is something Bay Area people love to hate but we all know when it does not run, the cities it runs through are greatly impacted! I do wonder what the Bay Area would be like if the original design was actually created, would we be better off or still in the same spot?

I've never forgotten my first ride on BART in 1972 when it was brand new, and the Trans-bay tube wasn't even open yet. Compared to the rapid-transit systems I knew from Boston and New York, BART was impressively futuristic. Later that year, when I first visited Montreal and rode around on their fabulous Metro, I was even more impressed. At 16 years old this looked like the future, and it wouldn't be long before there were systems like these everywhere. My dream was to live close to a rapid-transit station. Fifty years later I am living that dream — alas, it is in Boston where their abysmally neglected system is often a nightmare!

I rode BART for 3 days when visiting San Francisco (I stayed in Oakland) and loved it. I kinda wished trains were more frequent, but they were so spacious, comfortable and fast. The two-level stations under Market street were quite cool, too.

Awesome video! As a Concord (pronounced like "conquered") resident I use BART nearly every day to get to the City and the gym. Cool to see a video from an outside expert perspective about something I use so much without even thinking about it

RMT - the bart trains in 1970 had brown cloth seats w/ wooden arm rests and wooden Dividers in the handicap seating near door entrance. the cars also had dim Flourecent lighting.

When San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge was built there was also the Interurban Electric Railway (IER) that ran a long with the Key System until July 26, 1941. BART is in the process of upgrading their rolling stock. The older rolling stock was the same rolling stock that was built when BART first opened on September 11 1973. It didn't help that the builder of that rolling stock went out of business. The fact that BART runs on a wide gage of 5' 6" allows for a larger passenger load and a smoother ride.

Nice job. About that "redundant" extension to Santa Clara: For operational reasons (I'd imagine storage of the extra rolling stock they're going to need for serving downtown San Jose) there needs to be a railyard at the end of the line, and the only feasible place to put it would be in Santa Clara where there's room. It's also right by an existing Caltrain/Ace/Amtrak station and beside Santa Clara University, so you might as well put a BART station in there while you're at it. This will enable a single-seat journey between the East Bay and the university. Given the balkanized fare structure of incompatible transit systems in the Bay Area, this would be a significant convenience for riders and will result in more ridership. A BART-Caltrain change at Diridon would be a pain in the neck, inefficient, and likely pretty costly for riders, which would be a deterrent to ridership. A few years ago the VTA added a bike-pedestrian tunnel under the tracks at Santa Clara station, making it accessible from both sides. The area north of the tracks is underdeveloped now, but that is changing, and it's ripe for TOD. Now if they could just get a tunnel under the runways at San Jose Airport to connect the terminals to Santa Clara station, that'd be pretty amazing! In an ideal world the terminals would have been built on the south side of the runways and closer to the railway lines, but we are where we are.