BART ridership continues to plummet amid concerns about coronavirus, the transit agency said this weekend.
On Friday, ridership was 184,605 — a 50 percent drop compared to 375,170 on an average Friday last month, BART officials said.
Over the past two weeks, BART has seen a dramatic decline in riders, starting with a 5 percent drop on March 2.
On Thursday, a 45 percent drop in ridership was tallied, with 231,820 riders compared to 417,531 on an average Thursday in February.
Maybe they should close down BART. I don’t know of a worse place to come into contact with millions of germs than when you are packed onto a BART train car …
Will you pay the hourly wages of every low-payed service worker who can’t get to work? Not everyone can afford to drive and taking busses would still run the risk of exposure and could add hours to the commute .That’s not a viable solution.
So what has Bart (ever) done to reassure riders that their trains are safe? I haven’t heard that they’re cleaning and disinfecting them regularly. They want people to pay to ride Bart, yet they do nothing in return. Riders aren’t asking for much. We’d just like to get from point A to point B without being exposed to diseases; harassed by freaks; or stabbed. Doesn’t seem like those are unreasonable requests.
WELL SAID !!
Haven’t ridden the Silver Wiener since the early seventies but from what I hear there are far worse things than the Coronavirus floating around on BART.
What are the real causes? Did the ridership decrease because people work from home or got laid off; or Nobody need to go anywhere by Bart because most events are cancelled.
If there is in crease in toll or traffic, then it is probably correct to assume that people ditch Bart for fear of germs.
I don’t think they are driving. I commute Concord to Pleasanton via my car, and my normal evening drive home, normally 50 minutes to an hour, has become much shorter. Last Friday 33 minutes. Unfortunately I then stopped at Safeway on Treat/Bancroft and lost the time to standing a very long line to pay for needed food items.
BTW, shout out to the Safeway employees for your patience!
Homeless pee (and leave other gross bodily fluids) on BART. You’d be crazy to use BART at this time.
Must be hard on the buskers.
Any day now you’ll be hearing about BART requesting a multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout to make up for lost fares. Need to keep the pockets filled for the lazy do-nothing union minions and corrupt management.
Well, if they do shutdown Bart that is going to prevent a lot of people, like myself, from getting to work. Not to mention that would mean a HUGE number of people out of work.
SF is likely going to be shutting down completely in the near future. Many entire buildings are already doing so. That’s not so bad for the folks who can work from home but so many cannot. They blue collar (backbone of the US) working on major construction or folks in the service industry have NO paid leave.
We haven’t even seen the beginning folks. The sooner eveyone takes this seriously the sooner we can get past it. This is no HOAX.
I recommend you stop watching local news and start paying attention to international news stations if you want the truth. God Bless America.
I have a family who work for an airline at sfo. His company is downsizing the workforce; haft department is being cut. The one that are left are being put on part time status. My brother in law works at a major tech, right now every one is working from home. Giving that fact and the government already declared an emergency so that people can qualify for unemployment insurance from this virus, I see an economy is taken a hit. If the government is pumping too much money, it could cause inflation and our money is worthless soon.
It certainly is my first thing off the list
Their cleaning records have been so bad during normal times, I highly doubt they can be trusted to “actually” clean and sanitize! Besides all kind of hoodlums ride bart…
Bart ridership is down.
The bills for operating Bart did not go down as the trains run as usual.
There will be a shortfall of cash.
How will that shortfall be rectified?
Rider rates go up along with sales taxes to cover the shortfall.
Oh well, what’s another 10% increase?
Why isn’t BART closed?They don’t really care about you,its money they care about
Bart is gross with or with the coronavirus. I don’t blame people for avoiding it.
OK, so ridership is down 50%. What percentage is revenue down? If they have both those quantities, it should be easy gauge the real cost of fare evaders.
Maybe if they cleaned the trains up, reduced fares to a reasonable rate and provided a safe environment to travel this wouldn’t be a problem. This is a filthy dirty and overpriced transit system. There’s also a lot of violent crime that occurs within it. And the fat cat politicians and those who operate the system seem to have very little regard for that. As long as you keep paying their overpriced fares.