BART announced via Twitter today that it has tapped a contractor to install 775 new fare gates across the Bay Area, an initiative that the beleaguered transit agency hopes will “win riders back and overhaul safety in the system.”
In a statement released in March, BART shared preliminary plans for the fare gates, which include “state-of-the-art technology” that the agency hopes will reduce fare evasion, as well as accommodate riders with disabilities.
The conceptualized design shows fare gates that starkly contrast those currently guarding BART entrances. The model presents gates with heights of six feet, and clear, swinging doors which will be “very difficult to be pushed through, jumped over, or maneuvered under.”
The new gates won’t start rolling out until the end of 2023, with West Oakland serving as their first stop. It’s unclear when any San Francisco stations will get the new gates. BART Board President Janice Li said the agency is committed to completing this project by 2026.
The project will be funded by BART, county, federal and state resources. In its March statement, the BART board anticipated costs of up to $90 million, $73 million of which had already been secured at the time of the press release. Today, BART did not clarify whether the remaining balance had been appropriated.
Prior to the pandemic, BART relied upon farebox recovery more than any other transit system in the United States: A full 60 percent of the agency’s operating expenses were derived from ticket-paying customers. The pandemic eviscerated BART’s finances more than other transit agencies — and rampant fare-jumping has done the same. It has also added to perceptions of chaos and lawlessness within stations and on the trains.
Fare evasion is rampant: The February BART chief’s report showed that, from January 2021 to Febuary 2023, an average of 448 calls per month came in regarding fare evaders.
Data aside, anecdotal evidence echoes the reports’ contents: Frequent BART riders say that fare evaders may, at times, outnumber paying customers.
“They’re more likely to jump than pay,” said an officer at 24th Street Station.
“I see it every day,” said Carlos, a longtime Mission resident, regarding BART jumpers. “All races, all genders, all classes, they all jump over those gates.”
Regarding the new gates, Carlos was skeptical how well they’d fare. “Criminals will always find a way to go around the city’s measures.”
Even when shown a model of the gates, he remained doubtful, repeating, slowly, “criminals will always find a way.”
Floor to ceiling turnstiles like local stops in NYC
How about they implement a system that can process a payment quicker than 5 days? I hopped a turnstile yesterday because they blocked my Clipper card and even though I paid (twice), the block can’t be removed for 5 days while they process my payment. Totally absurd.
Glad to see this moving forward. I don’t recall the last time I did NOT see a fare jumper at a BART station.
This might be a good time to move the station “agent” as someone who can make paying passengers feel safe and comfortable by deterring vandalism, helping with overdoses before they delay trains, and occasionally answer a question that can’t be answered by Google Maps.
Maybe we shouldn’t expect this public good to pay for itself? Why do we expect it to break even? What if we just paid for public transit because it’s so valuable to our society?
I don’t see any study linking fare evaders with any other crime beside evading the fare (nice and circular). Yet these new fare gates are sold as crime prevention. How many fare evaders do they need to stop to make up the money they spend on these fancy new gates (that will probably break down)? Maybe Bart should find a better use for all those free suburban parking lots they own? Maybe it’s time to take a long look at the 20th century suburban experiment and realize it was never going to be sustainable. These fare gates are absolutely not going to solve their problem, but it will give them some chairs to rearrange on the deck for a while.
Mathew, your comment makes me wonder if you ride Bart. I frankly don’t think I need a study to show that someone who cooks up their drugs, smokes weed, or injects something into their veins and passes out on the seats if they jumped the turnstile or not. The women’s murderer who was randomly stabbed in the neck was caught on video jumping the turnstile. Those who deficate on the floor? I’m guessing a lot of them jump the turnstile. The guy who was sleeping on the steps and kicked my when I stepped over him, I doubt he paid money to do that. The time I saw a guy empty a wallet he stole and leave all the ID cards on the seat, guess what? He probably jumped the turnstile. When someone gets on at San Bruno and pulls a bunch of brand new clothes out from under their jacket and starts ripping the tags of, hmmm, I wonder if they paid.
So $116K per gate for a solution that won’t work? The criminals will just tailgate paying customers.
Why don’t we do turnstyle gates like NYC uses?
At $4/fare _each gate_ needs to earn an additional 29,000 fares over their useful life, ignoring maintenance, time value of money, etc. Or 22.5 million new fares overall.
I am no longer flummoxed when BART gate attendants cower in their cubicles focusing on their smart phones while one person after another hops the stiles directly in front of them. (Or sell drugs on the stairs a stone’s throw away.)
I believe most BART officials have utter contempt for them, especially since the workers’ last strike. For them, the workers cost too much but are too difficult to dislodge… for now.
There is gold for a few in this corrupt hot potato game, as there is in every government project that spends on everything… but its people and the people they are supposed to serve.
And who will end up with the hot potato?
The smart ones reading this know: us.
Isn’t it rather simple?
BART workers should expose the corruption at the top and join with other workers in a general summer strike.
We are all held hostage paying for services that are universally failing.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper and safer to have a gate attendant upstairs to report gate jumpers and Bart police downstairs to escort them out?
How much is your budget for dealing with the PR crisis that will follow when every local journalism outfit writes the easy criminalizing poverty article and you have a dozen different civil rights organizations suing you when a police officer bonks someone in the head, or worse?
So long there are no consequences, fare-evading will continue. So long the city’s policy is to tolerate petty crime because of the social implications of prosecuting it, we will continue having petty crime.
It’s really sort of obvious. You can’t have your cake (feel great about how tolerant you are about petty (or all) crime) and eat it too (not have petty crime).
I have rode BART on weekends to Antioch many times and have not seen a BART officer checking train cars at the end of the line in both directions to catch people just sleeping on the train. They really need to beef up the police patrols throughout the trains and the stations etc .. on a daily basis. In both directions!
The idea of preventing fair evasion is great. The gates are too low ! I’m able to get over the gates and I’m 62 years old. Stop wasting money 😡 on something that’s not working.
Mark my words. These will be very easy to sneak through and will be a $90 million boondoggle.
If they can keep fare evaders out, BART crime and vandalism will be greatly reduced.
I can’t believe they haven’t done anything about it until now, but I have low confidence that this solution will actually be effective knowing how Bay Area transit manages to make many poor choices.
I live next door to bay fare bart station and I personally don’t think that fare Hoppers are the actual problem. In the last couple years I’ve taken to avoiding the station at all costs, i have children and I dont even like walking thru the station to get to the mail any more due to the open air drug use. On any given day I can walk thru there and spot multiple syringes just discarded on the ground and there is always addicts smoking near by. The elevators smell of piss and the people loitering are crazy and scary. John george releases patients and sends them off with a bart card and that’s where they end up. I’ve found several people in my back yard this year which is up from one or two in years past. I think Bart should be more concerned about the welfare of its riders and the residents around the stations and the quality of the experience instead of putting 78 million in to making sure they get their money they might divert some of those funds into making sure its a safe enjoyable experience that isn’t exposing people to dirty needles and lunatics
The spikes on the top are a bit scary.
Assuming that is an anti-pigeon tool?