Monday, October 13, 2008

BART newbies a good thing but also problematic

Got an email from a reader today who brings up a very good point. I've actually written about it a couple times and often think about it while riding BART. The previous wave of gas price surge, plus the trend to be green, have certainly increased BART ridership, as we all know and experienced firsthand! But how quickly do these new passengers learn to adopt some BART rules and etiquette? Based on my observations, NOT VERY QUICKLY!

They take up 2 seats with briefcase, purse and luggage, they don't know the proper way to line up, they block doors, they eat/drink (but so do BART vets), they don't prepare their ticket in advance of entry, they ride on the wrong side of the escalators...amongst many other little things. Not a huge deal most of the time but you can certainly ID who's new on BART and how's not.

The reader today had wanted to raise an important point...he/she asked for a DIRECT LINE to BART because:

i need to make a suggestion that they begin to more stringently enforce the "no bikes on escalators" rule. with increased ridership comes newbies and people who don't care. and the bart station agents are all over the place in terms of enforcing the rule.

All the BART employees out there who read this blog, can you help? We know about the contact us page on the website, but is there anything else we can do to get some rules enforced??

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

there is no better way to get them to enforce the regulations than to just go up to an agent or a bart officer and have them follow you to the scene of the violation and show them what you are talking about.

Anonymous said...

Exactly what I was going to say!

Anonymous said...

Sure, your "violation" is going to sit there and wait to be apprehended. More often than not it's going to be rolling down the track on a train, and without you on it. BART needs to have more of an enforcement presence or at least do some hands-on public education by those in uniform to advise and warn people. That's the best way to get the message to some who apparently don't care otherwise.