BART unveiled a 15-step plan Wednesday to renew passenger confidence in the safety of riding public transit amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
The plan continues and builds on the health and safety protocols BART enacted as the pandemic began in earnest in mid-March, including more frequent disinfection and sanitization of train cars and stations and making hand sanitizer available at all stations.
The agency has procured enough hospital-grade disinfectant misters to fully disinfect each train car each night, which BART General Manager Bob Powers said should give passengers peace of mind as they try to avoid spreading or catching the coronavirus.
“If I can put a system out there that is safe and disinfected and clean and I can articulate that to the riders and provide that option, I can shape our ridership and the return to BART,” Powers said.
BART is currently running trains every 30 minutes on weekdays, and all trains will include 10 cars whenever possible to allow for maximum physical distancing. BART officials estimate train cars can hold up to 30 passengers standing 6 feet apart or up to 60 passengers standing 3 feet apart.
As the agency’s ridership increases, Powers said BART will be able to add more frequent train service across the system to maintain that capacity for physical distancing.
On the agency’s new generation of train cars, BART plans to pilot modular seating to create additional space for riders. Similar seating options will not be available on the system’s older train cars. There are about 120 “Fleet of the Future” cars currently in service, according to Powers.
“We think that piloting this with the Fleet of the Future will have a very positive impact on the social distancing,” Powers said.
Face coverings will be required on all trains in accordance with Bay Area public health guidelines and BART police are expected to enforce that requirement both aboard trains and at each station. BART will also install signs and markers reminding passengers of best health and safety practices.
With significantly reduced revenue down about 90 percent from BART’s projections due to low ridership, the agency expects to maintain a “very precariously balanced” budget for fiscal year 2020-2021, according to Powers.
“It absolutely relies quite heavily on (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) funding,” he said. The CARES Act included some $25 billion in relief funding for transit agencies across the country.
The proposed budget, which the agency’s Board of Directors will discuss at its meeting Thursday, does not include furloughs or layoffs as currently constructed, according to Powers, who said the agency’s budgets for
the next two fiscal years will be “unequivocally” dependent on funding included in a future federal stimulus package.
As the Bay Area’s economy reopens, BART officials plan to work with employers to encourage staggered shifts, which would reduce crowding during peak morning and evening commute hours. The agency is also providing its employees with personal protective equipment and coronavirus testing to ensure they remain healthy and able to maintain the transit system.
“We need to be there for when the economy starts to reopen and re-energize itself,” Powers said.
Not going to matter…
wow who writes this dribble for bart
bart said
The agency has procured enough hospital-grade disinfectant misters to fully disinfect each train car each night, which BART General Manager Bob Powers said should give passengers peace of mind…
wow each night and yet the county wont even let us stand within six feet of each other yet a full day of bums and urine and all those people and bart is
what did they say ….
BART officials estimate train cars can hold up to 30 passengers standing 6 feet apart or up to 60 passengers standing 3 feet apart.
so restaurants and social gatherings are verboten yet bart in its infinite wisdom has devised the greatest plan on earth ….force everyone including bums to follow their suggested distancing per car
lol really …really
the sad truth is bart is allowed to circumvent the rules with a plan that has no way of working unless oh yes ….they post gestapo and ss on the trains
but that can not happen they refused to uphold basic safety laws prior to the covid ….so now they are going to save us ….lol
but as we all know most will feel at ease knowing that the traisn are sprayed every night ….right
ooooohhh signs and markers ….yeah way to go
wow the simpletons will thank you bart
I mean any smooth talking politician always makes the lemmings feel at ease with giving up their rights and civil liberties
just don’t use bart and force their entire system to adjust to focus on the paying customers and not political slacking with signs and markers
I believe part of the 15 step plan may be yellow seats for the infected.
Lol! Yes, if you are coughing and spitting up phelgm – then sit here in the yellow seats and try to cough out the door when it opens.
Yellow seats are for the “housing challenged” guests. If they should have a bout of urinary incontinence, it won’t show up and us poor unsuspecting riders won’t know we are sitting on dried urine.
Disinfecting the train cars once a day will do nothing. You can reinfect a surface right away. What a joke this is.
Wonder if they’ll clean up the human excrement or urine while they’re at it.
All the doom and gloom headlines lately and Bart thinks we really wanna ride? It smells like garbage and fare hikes.
This makes me warm and fuzzy.
Will bums still be able to use it as a toilet, and drug den, or is that considered to be bad for public health now?
Cleaning trains at night will just mean that evening commuters will get sloppy-seconds. BART will still be a cruise ship without the bar, booze and scenic attractions.
My last bart ride was a mid-day journey PH to SF. It was raining. The end seats in all three cars I walked through had a some hard case bums in them. Most with large amounts of baggage with them and of those that were awake all appeared high.
BART has not been able to solve the fare
evasion problem for almost 48 years.
(We can celebrate the 50th anniversary
of their incompetence soon).
Let’s not rush them to solve the COVID
train riding problem. There is NEVER any
hurry to solve problems at BART.
90% rider reduction with NO employee
layoffs. That says it all.
I stopped taking BART because of aggressive panhandling, filthy conditions, too many mentally ill ‘passengers’ and a general feeling of being unsafe no matter the time of day. As a senior citizen, I will never be back on BART until there is a police presence on the trains. I’ll drive or Uber it. I take the subway when I go to NYC (as a tourist, I am not from there) because there is a police presence and I feel safe.
What has happened to BART is criminal; management should be ashamed.
One sneeze and it’s all over.
There will be way too many fights on the train when people want their personal space and feel violated.
Since they are going to more standing space, are they going to enforce social distancing? And how are they going to do that? The cattle car design does not lend itself to social distancing. I can see trains at WC packed. Are they not going to allow more passengers on at later stops?
I feel somewhat violated after reading this message….
BART will not be cleaning up their act anytime soon. Once everything gets “back to normal”, people will still be packed in like sardines on morning/evening commutes, no seating for the elderly (due to young princess needing her seat) and delayed train schedules due to police activity.
Everything about returning to work using BART is disgusting.
Smart companies let their employees continue to work from home.
We can’t be bothered right now. Tis the season.
So how and why is it that BART is so messed up, while other systems work great like the Washington DC metro I had the chance to ride a couple of years ago? I did a half-hour of research looking for differences and my primary suspect is the Board of Directors. The BOD in Washington appear to be 10 times as qualified as those here. Reading their biographies on the Washington website, there are serious professionals who have deep histories working in transportation, in federal government jobs overseeing such things, impressive college degrees and with ties to the top names in government including Obama and such. The biography page on BART BOD has almost nothing and to find info you need to look individually. We have Janice Li who is a biking activist for the financial district. Our district seems to have Debra Allen, who did some financial reporting and real estate investing. So, my suspect is that we have complete amateurs running our system versus hard core professionals. That is the difference of your BART experience being disgusting versus a nice clean safe trip to your destination in Washington.
The last strike proved the Bart Board doesn’t run the show, the unions do.
They don’t have anyone who understands that they are running a railroad. It’s not sexy, it’s not chic, and it’s not some reimagined virtual internet based transit village thing. It’s a train.
If they had board members with experience in running a railroad, they would be much more successful. What good is a board member who’s specialty is running bicycles?
WARNING: Bart is not enforcing masks on train.
WARNING: Bart is not enforcing [anything at all – insert your favorite word here and it will be true]
I gotta say, last time I rode BART, the car smelled like an Outhouse at the County Fair on a Hot Summer Day. I changed cars, no difference.
This BART manager talks about “shaping our ridership”.
May I suggest a focus on “shaping BART service”.
Enforce face coverings? They cannot even enforce the requirement for a having ticket before you ride. No ticket, no ride would go a long way to cleaning up the cars. It would also help their finances.
Would not be at all surprised if no where in bart planning are letters UVC used. Shanghai public transport firm runs their buses thru a disinfection chamber and it takes just five minutes.
Does not require use of chemicals that can lave a residue.
Could easily be adapted to use on bart or transit bus rolling stock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqytOuYfsnA
Built up a 35 watt UVC lamp in piece of six inch HVAC duct with a 200 cfm fan running 24/7 as an air cleaner, three years ago.