I watched 3 different newscasts on Sunday evening stating that Monday is yet another Spare the Air day. However, none of the newscasts indicated that no free rides will be offered this time around!!
Good thing I brought my BART ticket anyways today because to my surprise, the ticket gates were up as usual and there were no signs and posters declaring "Ride Free on Spare the AIr Day".
I don't mind not riding free, but shouldn't the newscasts responsibly tell us that portion too? To many of us, we equate "Spare the Air Days" with free rides. To people who don't normally take public transport, the free rides are great incentives! How do you think they felt when they walked up to the ticket gate and found out that had to buy a ticket?
5 comments:
After the Friday debacle, I can't say anyone involved in that mess had been convinced that BART is the way to go... I have never seen more people on the platforms, more hodlums running around and more people crammed so tightly on the trains in all the years I've taken BART. I for one am relived that the SPA free days are behind us and I think they need to rethink the offering on the next go around, perhaps returning to the morning only plan they used last year...
Spare the air day does not equate to free public transportation. The first few spare the air days (usually three, this year 6) may have free public transportation.
Every newscast I heard (KGO Radio, KGO TV, KRON, etc.) all made it very clear that this spare the air day did NOT include free public transit.
In the future I would like to see 6-12 days of fifty percent discounted BART fares on spare the air days. I think the discount would help motivate people to ride BART but keep the "less than savory" riders off the system.
I was so disgusted by some of the "passengers" using BART as an air conditioned hotel and harassing regular passengers that I probably will never take advantage of another free ride on BART.
i too thought that today's spare the air day was another free transit day. to my dismay, it wasn't. after reading two sources on the internet, i didn't see any mention of this being a 'non-free' day. if this keeps happening (spare the air day with normal transit fees), people will start ignoring these altogether.
Having saved nearly $60 over the three spare the air days, the only thing I hope they do next year is offer more days! Sure a few non-regulars were a bit clueless as to the normal BART etiquette, but for the most part I didn't have any trouble.
You were the lucky one, I was taking the train from fremont at 10:30 on friday, I like to save money just as much as the next guy but I would have gladly have paid to avoid what I had to endure to get back to concord.
Post a Comment