[URBAN NOTE] "Tunnel Visions: Bay Area Rapid Transit"

[rfmcdonald]

Acts of Minor Treason's Andrew Barton has an extended post up taking a look at u>Bay Area Rapid Transit, the San Francisco and Bay Area's rapid transit network. From the description--vintage 1970s, with all that' decade's boons and ills--it sounds like it'd be a fun network to ride. (Recent mass protests over police shootings notwithstanding.)

Generally speaking, public transit systems operate in the background of life. Aside from a few freaks and weirdos like me, people tend not to take much note of them beyond knowing how to use them to get from point to point. In much the same way as the electrical infrastructure or the water supply system, they tend to be an invisible but necessary component of the modern city, remarked upon at length only when there's a perceived problem. It can be argued that a well-run transit system is one that stays out of the headlines.

There's that, and then there's BART (pronounced "bart"). That's Bay Area Rapid Transit, the regional rapid transit system serving the San Francisco Bay Area. Unlike other transit systems, which make big news when trains get derailed or budgets get cut, in the recent past BART has had the dubious privilege of wide-ranging media coverage as a result of shootings by its police force and attacks against its website and the shutdown of cell phone coverage to frustrate protests. It stands apart from the crowd.

My experience with the system wasn't enough for me to really understand how well the system's run, since it's not nearly as friendly to hop-on, hop-off travel as most city transit systems - I had to plan out my BART journeys to a degree that I've never experienced before while riding rapid transit. Still, it was enough to demonstrate the degree to which BART stands apart from the other systems you'll find across North America. Created to replace the privately-run Key System, an interurban streetcar system that served the cities of the East Bay into the 1940s and rattled across the Bay Bridge into the 1950s, today's BART almost seems like a product of a 1970s view of the future.

Go, read.