I’ve complained plenty about BART doing so little to deter fare cheaters from jumping the turnstiles. But now, it appears that BART really does have a plan: Their $90 million “Next Generation Fare Gate” project.
The idea is to “harden” all stations by 2026 with “clear swing barriers that will be very difficult to be pushed through, jumped over, or maneuvered under.” The system already has a few similar doors, for instance at the Rockridge station, and while they’re not completely cheat-proof (one person can hold the door open for his friends to follow), they do seem likely to lessen instances of fare-evasion, which BART estimates costs the system at least $25 million a year.
According to BART, they’re already secured $73 million of the $90 million they need, and “will continue to work to secure full funding from local, state, and federal sources.” The builder is STraffic, a Korean engineering company with connections to Samsung, which announced the contract on June 8. In a press release, STraffic said “Advance 3D sensors will detect if someone is in a wheelchair or has a bike, stroller, or luggage with them, allowing for more time before the swing barrier closes.” The first gate is set to open at West Oakland station later this year.
The project comes at a challenging time for BART. Not only is the agency facing a fiscal cliff in coming years; it’s been plagued by complaints that it’s rife with waste, fraud and abuse. In March, California State Senator Steve Glazer resigned from a Senate Select Committee looking into ways to financially support Bay Area transit agencies; he accused BART of “bad faith and broken promises,” including a $350,000 homeless contract that resulted in just one person receiving services—which means that BART has a history of wasting money. The public has been highly critical of BART’s handing of homelessness, the mentally ill and cleanliness issues, which BART has ignored for years. Although BART reported that, in a 2022 survey, some 67% of responders said they were “very or somewhat satisfied” with services provided by BART, on a more granular level the same survey found very low customer rankings for “enforcement of fare evasion” and “addressing homelessness on the BART system.” The system also ranked very low on “BART PD [police department] presence.”
Speaking of the latter, last month the Daily Californian reported that BART “saw its highest arrest totals since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic…after doubling its police presence on trains in March.” As a BART rider, I can tell you how relieved passengers are when we see anyone in uniform on the station or in the cars. I bet if you took a poll, most BART riders would ask for at least two officers per train, patrolling from car to car and interfering with freaks and offenders. Predictably, defiant police haters such as Cat Brooks continue to complain about the presence of cops on trains. According to the Daily Californian, Brooks “said that often young people of color are targeted as a result of increased police presence.” It may be true, and probably is, that “young people of color” are disproportionately stopped by police on BART, as they are elsewhere. But that’s because “young people of color” disproportionately commit criminal activity, on BART as elsewhere. This is something that Brooks and her cohorts can never admit, because to them, there’s no such thing as “criminal behavior” by people of color. Anything a person of color does, no matter how illegal, is because he was forced into it by structural racism, which makes him—the criminal—into the victim!
Anyhow, while not everything is hunky-dory on BART, it’s nice to see that things seem to be getting better. At least they’re responding to the public’s demand for change. At the same time, I’m intensely aware of Murphy’s Law: Whatever can go wrong, will.
Steve Heimoff