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There’s been a big decline in the number of riders who say they’ve witnessed fare evasion on BART. For our latest Quarterly Performance Report, we asked riders, “did they see anyone enter or exit the station without paying their fare today?” Only 17% of those questioned said they had, which is a drop of nearly 1/3 from the same period just a year ago when 25% of respondents said they had witnessed fare evasion. 

In the last 12 months, BART has installed Next Generation Fare Gates at more than 20 stations across the system. More stations are getting new gates every month. In just the last few days installation work began at Concord, El Cerrito Plaza, Glen Park, and San Leandro stations.

“The decline in fare evasion sightings is the latest indication that Next Generation Fare Gates are transforming the rider experience,” said BART General Manager Bob Powers. “We know it’s not possible to stop 100% of fare evasion, but we are seeing that these state-of-the-art, durable gates are proving themselves to be more resistant to fare evaders and are deterring unwanted activity on BART.”

As more stations receive new gates, BART’s crime rate has dropped. Overall crime on BART was down 17% last year even as BART served 2.6 million more trips than it did in 2023.

As fewer riders are seeing fare evasion, participation in the Clipper START discount program is skyrocketing. Clipper START trips on BART for the latest quarter more than doubled to 363,238 from only 150,282 a year ago. That’s a 141% increase. Clipper START provides a 50% discount on Bay Area transit to eligible riders who have an annual household income of 200% of the federal poverty level or less. 

BART has heavily promoted enrollment in Clipper START throughout the process of installing new fare gates. BART is on track to have Next Generation Fare Gates at all 50 stations by the end of this year.

A photo of a scrapbook showing Atsushi Goto on a BART train in 2001. The text reads, "Me riding the BART subway. The vibe inside the cars reminded me of an office with sofa chairs." Photos courtesy of Atsushi Goto. 

On Friday, April 19, at 3pm, Atsushi Goto’s plane touched down at San Francisco International Airport. He hastily collected his carry on, went through customs, and dashed toward the SFO BART station. A train was waiting for him on the platform.  

The last time Atsushi rode BART, the trains still had yellow carpets and fabric seats. The Fleet of the Future trains were just an idea, and the legacy fleet didn’t have that adjective attached to its name yet. Actually, at the time, the legacy fleet was only a few years older than Atsushi, then a 21-year-old university student in Japan touring the U.S. 

That was 2001. This past April marked 23 years since Atsushi last set foot on a BART train. And the trains that met him at SFO in April were not the ones he knew.  

The 24 hours that followed his touchdown were a whirlwind of a trains, buses, cable cars, and one big party for a bunch of old trains at MacArthur Station – BART’s retirement celebration for the legacy trains. On the night of Saturday, April 20, just over a day after arriving, Atsushi was on a plane again, headed back home to Japan. Atsushi is an automobile designer, and on Monday, he had work. 

Atsushi poses with the train cab cutout at the legacy retirement ceremony on Saturday, April, 20, 2024. Photo courtesy of Atsushi Goto. 

“I feared this was my last chance to see these trains. I could not wait any longer,” Atsushi said, speaking on a videocall from Japan. He’d never intended for his return to the Bay Area to take so many years, but between work and his other adult responsibilities, it just happened that way. 

Atsushi had heard rumblings of a BART legacy fleet retirement party and final ride from rail fans online, so every single day, he checked BART’s X account to see if the event information had been posted. He immediately started looking for plane tickets. A few weeks before, it finally appeared on his feed. Just a few days later Atsushi booked his ticket. Due to his work schedule, he could only get away for the weekend.  

He has no regrets. His final ride on the legacy fleet was everything he dreamed it would be.  

“It was unforgettable, a wish come true,” he said.  

On his last ride, Atsushi took tons of photos, celebrated with fellow rail fans, and reflected on the 23-year-long ride that took him from his first spin on an original BART train to his final one that day. Before the train returned to the yard from Fremont Station, Atsushi said, “I touched the train to thank it for its many years of service.”  

Atsushi Goto pictured with one of his legacy car number plates back home in Japan. Photo courtesy of Atsushi Goto. 

BART Communications learned about Atsushi and his love of BART from Customer Services Assistant Nathan Nguyen. Nathan’s the kind of guy who’ll go out of his way to help a customer, even if that customer lives in a different time zone halfway around the world.  

Before he learned about the legacy retirement event, Atsushi was desperate to get his hands on some legacy car number plates. There’s no international shipping option on Railgoods.com, where you purchase the quick-to-sellout plates, but Nathan made it happen just for him. The cost of shipping was as much as the plates themselves, but Atsushi wanted them nonetheless.  

“As I got to know Atsushi communicating through email and learning the love he has for BART, I made it my mission to get these plates to him in Japan," said Nathan. "Atsushi is a very genuine guy, and the love he has for BART is overwhelming!” 

A photo of the full scrapbook page with photos Atsushi took in 2001 and the BART ticket he used. Courtesy Atsushi Goto. 

Atsushi has a page in an old scrapbook commemorating his first BART ride. There’s a photo of himself at 16th St. Mission Station. He’s 21, and the ends of his hair are bleached like a true 90s kid. Below the photo, Atsushi pasted his first BART ticket. The text reads on the page reads: “I took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). The interior of the train felt like an office sofa. It was luxurious and modern.” 

Atsushi had wanted to visit San Francisco since he was a child. His mother used to read to him from the 1950s-era children’s book “Maybelle the Cable Car” by Virginia Lee Burton, translated into Japanese from the original English.  

A snapshot of the opening lines of “Maybelle the Cable Car” (Copyright Houghton Mifflin).  

“Maybelle was a cable car / a San Francisco cable car / Cling clang . . . clingety clang / Up and down and around she went,” the the classic story begins.  

“I was really surprised by the angle of that hill,” Atsushi said.  

When he finally made it to the U.S. in 2001, Atsushi felt like he was on a movie set.  

“I really like America because as a child, I’d often see American movies on tv, like “Speed” and “Top Gun” with Tom Cruise,” he said. He’s also a big fan of American hard rock, including Guns N’ Roses and Aerosmith. 

Atsushi on a Muni bus in 2001. The 8042 bus was retired in 2016. Photo courtesy of Atsushi Goto. 

During his visit, he traveled west to east, stopping in cities along the way, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Washington D.C., New York City, and Dallas. The Bay Area was one of his favorite places, and he spent lots of time riding its many forms of transit.  

“The great thing about the Bay Area’s transportation system is that it combines modern and traditional elements and together, they function as a means of daily transportation,” he said. “For example, on the one hand there are advanced systems like BART and Muni, on the other hand, there are cable cars and the Muni F line. It’s fascinating and wonderful.” 

A Tokyo Metro Series 6000 train. Photo by Atsushi Goto. 

BART’s “sofa-like spacious seats and seamless exterior” made him feel as if he were riding in a vehicle from the future. The cars’ exterior design was quite unlike the trains in Japan, where most of the trains are square and boxy, Atsushi said. He noted that the BART trains influenced the design of the cab on the Tokyo Metro Series 6000 trains, which he used to ride to get to school in Tokyo. He felt a strong sense of familiarity, communion even, with the BART trains off the bat.  

“The legacy train’s design is so simple and iconic a child can easily draw it. With its round headlights and large windows, the design is still fresh even 50 years after its introduction,” he added.  

He also thought the stations were cool thanks to their modern architecture, red electronic display boards, and the hip BART logo and color scheme.  

Atsushi eats clam chowder at a stand in San Francisco during his visit in 2001. Photo courtesy Atsushi Goto.

On his second visit to the Bay Area so many years later, Atsushi said his heart leapt when he came face to face with a BART train at SFO Station. He said his first ride on the new trains was “very comfortable,” and he appreciated the “sloping cross section and color scheme of the cars," which reminded him of the original cars. He also liked how the colors of the train “really match the beautiful Bay Area scenery.” 

After dropping his bag at his hotel in downtown San Francisco, Atsushi hopped on a cable car on Market Street and rode it to Fisherman’s Wharf. After dining on some clam chowder on the waterfront, Atsushi rode back to his hotel on the F Market and Wharves Line, a heritage streetcar service that uses legacy equipment from retired fleets from San Francisco and abroad.  

Scenes from the legacy train retirement event on Saturday, April 20, 2024. Photo by Atsushi Goto.

Saturday morning, he rode BART to Fruitvale Station because he got a tip that the legacy trains would be passing through the station on their way to MacArthur for the ceremony. He met another rail fan waiting for the train, too, and so they hung out and chatted while they waited.  

Then, at last, he rode to MacArthur and basked in the atmosphere generated by thousands of rail fans celebrating BART and its historic trains.  

A legacy train on the tracks during the legacy train retirement event on Saturday, April 20, 2024. Photo by Atsushi Goto.

On the train, he said the scene on the train was very lively and fun.  

“It was a wonderful experience to sit in a spacious seat and ride while looking out at the Bay Area,” he added.  

After the train pulled into its final stop – Fremont Station – Atsushi waited on the platform with dozens of other rail fans to see the trains off to the yard.  

Once the train sailed away, Atsushi had one more rail system to ride. His rail fan friend at Fruitvale told him about Caltrain’s Nippon Sharyo cars, which are being retired. So, Atsushi dashed back to San Francisco, caught one of the double-decker, Japanese-made beauties, and rode it a few stops. Then, it was back on BART to SFO and a long plane ride back home.  

Atsushi said he won’t let so much time pass between now and his next visit to the Bay. He admits he should have come back sooner, but when he started working after graduation, it became difficult to take long holidays.  

“I would definitely like to visit again,” he said. But he’s going to wait until the Western Railway Museum opens it BART museum with its three legacy train cars.  

A Timeline of Atsushi’s Whirlwind Visit to the Bay Area 

9pm JST, Friday, April 19: Atsushi Goto’s plane departs Narita Airport in Tokyo. 

3pm PDT, Friday, April 19: Atsushi touches down at San Francisco International Airport.  

5pm PDT, Friday, April 19: Atsushi takes BART from SFO to Downtown San Francisco and walks to his hotel by Civic Center/ UN Plaza. 

7pm PDT, Friday, April 19: Atsushi catches the cable car on Market Street to Fisherman’s Wharf.  

9pm PDT, Friday, April 19: Atsushi rides the Muni F train back to downtown. 

11am PDT, Saturday, April 20: Atsushi photographs a legacy train passing through Fruitvale Station as it heads to MacArthur for the celebration. 

1pm PDT, Saturday, April 20: Atsushi attends the legacy train retirement ceremony at MacArthur Station and queues to board the last train. 

2pm PDT, Saturday, April 20: Atsushi rides the last legacy train to depart MacArthur, then sees it off as it returns to the yard.  

7pm PDT, Saturday, April 20: Atsushi arrives at Caltrain station and boards the Nippon Sharyo double-decker train. 

 9pm PDT, Saturday, April 20: Atsushi takes BART from Civic Center to SFO.  

1am PDT, Sunday, April 22: Atsushi’s flight to Tokyo departs San Francisco. 

5am JST, Sunday, April 22: Atsushi’s flight lands at Tokyo Haneda International Airport. 

Update 9/11/25

BART General Manager Bob Powers, Deputy General Manager Michael Jones, Assistant GM of Operations Shane Edwards, and Assistant GM for Infrastructure Delivery Sylvia Lamb provided an update (video above) of two recent service disruptions. On September 5, a computer equipment problem following overnight network upgrade work prevented the on-time start of Friday morning BART service. East Bay service was started at 9:30am and full service was available at 11:45am. On August 29, a report of smoke in the Transbay Tube impacted BART service between Oakland and San Francisco for several hours during the Friday evening commute.

Update 9/6/25

BART is providing more details about Friday's disruption in this memo to our Board of Directors. It will be discussed at Thursday's (9/11/25) Board of Directors meeting that starts at 9am during the General Manager's Report. 

Update 09/05/25, 11:45am:

Regular BART service has resumed throughout the system. All stations are now open. 

East Bay service was restored at 9:30am and full service was restored at 11:45am.

This service disruption occurred due to a computer equipment problem following overnight network upgrade work. The work is part of an ongoing multi-year project to replace the communications and computer systems, including  hardware such as switches and routers, that support BART operations.

This is not a new project and BART has been doing this work during the hours we are not running without issues previously. 

Something related to the upgrade work last night triggered a problem preventing all of our communication systems to function properly. Crews were able to isolate where the problem was coming from and they stabilized the system. We are investigating exactly what went wrong. 

Update 09/05/25, 9:15am: 

Limited East Bay service will start at approximately 9:30am. There is currently no service through the Transbay Tube and no service at any San Francisco stations or on the Peninsula.

Yellow Line will service will resume from Antioch to 12th Street Oakland. Blue Line service will resume from Dublin to MacArthur. Orange line service will resume from Berryessa to Richmond. BART to Antioch service is resuming now.

A computer equipment problem following network upgrade work is preventing the start of service this morning. Seek alternative means of transportation. bart.gov/alternatives provides options without BART service.

BART has completed the installation work on a milestone project that is already making the system safer. Next Generation Fare Gates are now in place at all 50 BART stations. BART promised to complete installation by the end of 2025 but beat that deadline by four months with the final gates being installed in August. 

“This is the latest in a string of victories for riders that are transforming the daily BART experience,” said BART General Manager Bob Powers. “Since last year we have boosted our visible safety presence in the system, increased cleaning, gone to running only Fleet of the Future trains, became the first transit agency in the Bay Area to offer riders Tap and Ride, and now we have installed state-of-the-art fare gates that are already deterring unwanted behavior. Our riders say they want a system that is safe, clean, and user friendly, and we are responding with decisive actions.” 

The number of riders who say they’ve witnessed someone fare evade on their trip has dropped by more than 50% in just the last year. In the latest Quarterly Performance Report, only 10% of riders said they saw someone fare evade. That’s down from 22% in the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2025. Reports of fare evasion have been dwindling as Next Generation Fare Gates have been installed at more stations.  

“The completion of the Next Generation Fare Gates project marks a major step forward in modernizing our system and enhancing the rider experience,” said BART Board Vice President Melissa Hernandez. “These new gates improve accessibility, safety, and efficiency, and reflect BART’s commitment to investing in the future of public transit across the Bay Area.” 

The gates feature a unique door locking mechanism that makes their swing barriers very hard to push through, jump over, or maneuver under. The overall fare gate array height (gate, console, integrated barrier) forms a barrier of 72 inches minimum to deter fare evasion. 

“The gates deployed by BART are the only ones of their kind in the world,” said Sylvia Lamb, BART Assistant General Manager for Infrastructure Delivery and head of the fare gates project “Our team did incredible work to beat the installation deadline by several months. Now we will benefit from lesson learned over the last year through the experiences of hundreds of thousands of riders to focus on making these gates even more resilient.” 

Upcoming work will focus on the full utilization of advanced sensors to make it harder for those who want to “piggyback” into the system by closely following behind paying riders. 

BART replaced 715 fare gates across a system that spans five counties. 

Have yourself a BARTy little sweater – and vest and beanie and scarf. That’s right, we just kicked off the Railgoods.com BART Holiday Merch Pre-Sale, and this year, we have four brand new items to help you toast BART and the winter season. 

The heatwave’s over, the sweat on your brow has dried, your sunburn’s faded. It’s time to start shopping for knitwear. Get ‘em while it’s hot. 

Do you want to be sleighing in the Bay next winter? Preorder the new holiday goodies before this sled sails. The pre-sale is open on Railgoods.com now and will close July 31. Pre-sale items ship early November.

If you miss the pre-sale, we will have sweaters and other holiday merch on hand in late November, which you can order on Railgoods.com, buy at the Customer Services Center at Lake Merritt Station, or purchase at seasonal Railgoods pop-ups at events around the Bay Area, including SweaterFest 2024 (more details to come).  

You can also win holiday goodies from BARTable! Sign up for the BARTable This Week newsletter on bart.gov/bartable to be alerted when contests are running.  

BART holiday sweaters always sell out, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. Order now so you don’t have to DM us later asking if we can “strike up a deal.” We cannot.  

We will however give you a discount code. Use code 2024BARTholiday20 for $20 off holiday merch orders over $100 and 2024BARTholiday10 for $10 off holiday merch orders over $50. This is the first time we’ve offered discounts on holiday merch, and this is the lowest priced sweater we’ve ever sold (it’s also the least expensive holiday transit sweater in the Bay).  

Holiday merch prices (shipping costs vary by weight and distance): 

• Sweater - $49.99 (limited to 2 sweaters per order)  

• Vest - $39.99  

• Beanie - $15.99  

• Scarf - $19.99   

BART is at the heart of the Bay Area, and we should be proud of the public institutions that make our region merry and bright. Buy some merch and rep your love for BART and the Bay – the ugly sweater way. 

This is the fourth year BART has sold holiday sweaters. Last year, we sold our entire inventory of 3,000 sweaters. Sales exceeded $100,000.  

BART is one of the first transit agencies to sell holiday sweaters. We designed the first sweater in 2021 as a BARTable contest giveaway and ordered just five for the contests. Our inventory proved insufficient after General Manager Bob Powers wore one of the sweaters during a media event about BART’s air filters. People wanted them...badly. A week later, we held a sale for the public, and the sweaters sold out in under an hour.  

Every year since, despite increasing our inventory into the thousands, the sweaters have sold out.  

Thank you to this year's BART holiday merch models: Mag Tatum, Senior Board Analyst; Damya Belford, BART Communications Intern; and Oscar Brown, Principal Internal Auditor.

BART wishes you a wonderful Filipino American History Month this October.

To celebrate, we are revisiting an interview with Crisis Intervention Specialist Caryl Blount that we published during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. In the story, Blount discusses her Filipino roots, her gratitude for her family (including her BART family), and shares her recipe for pork sinigang. 

BART celebrates heritage and diversity months throughout the year, and with stories such as CIS Blount’s, we hope to recognize some of the many exceptional employees in our organization.  

Celebrate the holiday by ordering your BARTy Jeepney t-shirt on Railgoods.com. 

CIS Caryl Blount pictured at Lake Merritt Station.

Last April, Crisis Intervention Specialist (CIS) Caryl Blount was finishing up her shift at Millbrae Station when she and her partner, CIS Dinah Amoah-Wynn, came across an elderly woman on the platform. It was a cold night, and the station was closing. The woman sat alone on the platform with her bags.   

Blount and Wynn walked up to the woman to let her know the station was closing and she needed to leave. The woman replied: “I have nowhere to go.”  

After talking to her, Blount and Wynn learned her name was Juanita and that she’d come to the U.S. from the Philippines a week earlier. She was only supposed to be in San Francisco for a few days, but she had missed her return flight. It appeared she’d been sleeping at the airport and riding BART back and forth between Millbrae and SFO Station.  

Blount and Wynn asked Juanita for phone numbers of people they could call for her, but she couldn’t remember any. They realized she was likely suffering from dementia.  

“She gave us puzzle pieces, and we had to put the story together from there,” said Blount.  

Juanita carried a notebook that contained drawings, recipes, scribbles, and fortunately, scattered phone numbers. So Blount and Wynn began dialing the numbers at random. One person picked up – it was a woman in New York named Elizabeth. Juanita, about 45 years prior, had been her nanny.  

It was the early morning in New York, and after the phone call from the CIS team, Elizabeth sprang into action and bought her former nanny a ticket back to Manila. She would arrange things with Juanita’s sister to make sure she was transported safely from the plane back home.  

Blount and Wynn then brought Juanita back to the airport and connected her with staff there, as well as the morning CIS team, who went to check on her the next day. Everyone wanted to make sure she got on that plane.  

A day or so later, Blount received a text from Elizabeth: “Juanita arrived safely in Manila!” She thanked the CISes for their work in getting Juanita home.  

The text message Blount has saved on her phone from Elizabeth.  

For Blount, the encounter was deeply personal.  

“She’s Filipino, and I’m Filipino. I was like, this could be my grandma!” Blount said. “I couldn’t give up on her. I had to find a way to get her home." 

Blount joined BART as a CIS in 2022, coming from Contra Costa County where she worked as a case manager. The job was similar to what she does now in some ways, but the CIS work is “much more hands on, much more challenging,” she said.  

Blount has been riding BART for most of her life. She grew up in Pittsburg and Antioch, and she had the opportunity to ride the trains for free thanks to her dad, Carlito, who worked at BART for 25 years before retiring a few years ago. Carlito immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines in his teens. He started at BART as a car cleaner in the early 90s and worked his way up to become a transit vehicle mechanic, fixing the same cars he once cleaned. Blount still remembers going with him to Take Your Kids to Work Day at BART more than three decades ago. She couldn’t believe how many people it took to run the system.  

“I don’t think my dad really knows how much that one visit to his work impacted me,” she said. “I learned BART is run by this massive brain. It’s not just the train operators!” 

Blount and her father often bond about BART. She remembers calling him after she went to Milpitas Station for the first time, which opened in 2020.  

“I said, ‘Guess what, dad? I just went to Milpitas. Have you been there?”  

Blount said her father passed his intense work ethic down to her. Often, he’d leave for his shift at Concord Yard hours early just to make sure he got there on time and had a few moments to decompress before the workday kicked off.  

“He hated calling in sick, missing work,” she said. “And I’m the same way. My mom always tells me I’m just like him.”  

BART was such a big part of her dad’s life (and therefore her life) that Blount couldn’t be prouder to be a part of “the BART family” herself. 

Click here to download the recipe card and zoom in. 

“My dad provided a safe and secure home for us, and BART helped him to do that,” she said. “That’s why BART will always have a special place in my heart.” 

In addition to her dad, Blount counts her mom and big brother as mentors. Her brother for teaching her street smarts, inspiring her to believe in herself and for always being there for her without judgement; and her mother for the sacrifices she’s made and the many hours she’s spent babysitting Blount’s three children while she and her husband, Jason Blount, are at work. Jason happens to also work at BART as a mechanic at the Oakland shops. Blount calls him "one of my biggest supporters." 

“It takes a village to raise my kids,” said Blount, who recently returned from maternity leave (It’s a boy!). “My mom holds it down for me so I can come to BART and be my best. That’s unconditional love right there.” 

Blount also credits her culture for forming her into the person she is today.  

“I have that Filipino pride,” she said. “I’m proud of the fact that my dad grew up poor and came here to make a life not only for himself, but for us and his grandchildren. My parents made a great life for us here, and I’m proud of that every day.”  

Blount makes sure her children know where they came from. Their dad is Black, and with Black History Month and AAPI Heritage Month being close to each other on the calendar, Blount and her husband go out of the way to celebrate and talk about their cultures.  

“We want them to grow up with a sense of where they came from,” she said. “A lot of the time that means story time with the grandparents.” 

A photo of Blount’s immediate family during the holidays. 

Each May, Blount’s family, including her many aunties, uncles, and cousins, gather for a celebration of AAPI Heritage Month as well as Mother’s Day and her parents’ anniversary (it’s a busy month for celebrating). The gathering revolves largely around food. On the table, there is always pancit, lumpia, chicken adobo, sinigang over rice, and lots of dessert.  

“Food is always at the center of everything. That’s where the conversations and the stories start,” Blount said.  

The kids love to ask questions of their elders. Blount remembers a specific conversation between her daughter and her great-grandmother, who was visiting from the Philippines.  

She asked things like, “What did you do for fun when you were a kid?” Blount said. And grandma would reply, “We played with rocks and sticks and built little houses,” to which her daughter would say, “You didn’t have Legos? No tv? No iPads? Wow, you must have been bored.”  

Blount often takes time to reflect on her roots and the differences in her upbringing compared to her elders, as well as her many family members who still live in the Philippines. She’s full of gratitude for her roots, she said, and especially for her large, supportive family.  

She asked: “Without them, who would I be?”  

End of line worker Lorinzo Haley

How much can you accomplish in five minutes? Could you clean two 75-foot-long BART cars? Sweep them, mop them, spritz them in the short amount of time the train dwells at an end-of-line station before starting its next run? And – no pressure! -- that five minutes is a hard deadline. Even a brief delay can disrupt the highly choreographed network of trains that make up the BART system.  

If you’re one of BART’s nearly 100 end-of-line cleaners, that’s just another day on the job. You see, in five minutes, an end-of-line cleaner accomplishes more than most people can get done in thrice the time.  

You might say end-of-line cleaners are the Quicksilver superheroes of BART’s robust cleaning operation. They’re the workers who clean the trains between regularly scheduled “thorough cleans” and “standard cleans,” which require cars be out of service. Unlike these cleans, end-of-line cleans have a time limit five-to-ten-minute deadline, depending on the station, that can’t be compromised. Even a small delay can reverberate across BART’s system.

So what can end-of-line cleaners accomplish in just five to ten minutes? It turns out, quite a bit.

End of line worker Eric Santos

BART Communications recently had the opportunity to follow a group of end-of-line cleaners at Dublin/Pleasanton Station, the last stop on the Blue Line. Each team consists of three to four cleaners, and all the shifts overlap to make sure there’s coverage for every moment BART is in service, including during the cleaners’ breaks and lunches. An additional cleaner joins the team between 9am and 5pm – BART's busiest hours.  

Carmen Williams, a utility foreworker who oversees Dublin/Pleasanton and Berryessa/North San Jose stations, said she has more cleaners on her team than ever. As part of its Safe and Clean Plan, BART has hired additional part-time end-of-line cleaners to ensure the cleanliness of train interiors during daily revenue service. At the end of revenue service, trains head to maintenance yards for nightly standard cleans conducted by BART’s car cleaning team. BART also recently doubled the number of times we deep clean trains. These end-of-line cleaners’ work holds the trains over until its time for their until their nightly cleanings in the yard. You can read more about these cleanings here.  

Glossary of BART Train Car Cleaning Terms 

Note: It is not possible to thorough clean the 461 cars required to run service every single day. 

End-of-line cleaner Lorinzo Haley is the day shift co-team lead with Eric Santos. He says the job is never stressful for him because he is “prepared for any and every situation at all times.” 

As you can imagine, the situations cleaners like Haley and Santos face vary widely. There’s the regular wear-and-tear from shoes and sticky fingers – these trains carry thousands of people, after all – but also accidental messes and, in some cases, intentional misuse. On busy days, it’s not uncommon for each cleaner to get off the car with a full bag of trash. For events and parades, those trash bags are often filled with feathers, glitter, and confetti.  

End of line workers Lorinzo Haley and Eric Santos

"We hire experienced janitorial people that have at least a year of industrial janitorial experience before coming to BART, so these are people that are knowledgeable about the equipment and how to pick up spills," said Juan Matta, Manager of Transit Vehicle Cleaning. "We give them additional training at BART as far as how to clean on a moving train safely, how to keep yourself safe around patrons, and how to keep the patrons safe." 

Here’s how the typical end-of-line clean goes: Three to four cleaners are stationed at the ready on the platform. Their trash bags are filled with supplies, and their brooms and mops are strategically positioned on the platform for easy access. The train pulls in, the passengers disembark, and then the clock starts ticking.  

End of line worker Lorinzo Haley

The cleaners split the train in order to cover every car. If the team has been alerted to a mess before the train arrives, they prioritize that first.

The first step is cleaning up any biohazards and offensive graffiti. Cleaners wear gloves throughout their shifts, no exceptions, and receive training to handle biohazard materials. They also carry wipes soaked in a special graffiti removal solution to scrub away graffiti as quickly as possible. From there, they prioritize spills, left-behind garbage, and grime.

After addressing these top priorities – and if the short amount of time on the clock permits – cleaners will sweep the floors, including under seats. If they spot a sticky seat or grimy wall along the way, they’ll whip out their towels and spray bottles filled with antibacterial solution to take care of them.

Then, it’s mopping time. On some trains, Haley would start by sweeping a car, and Santos would come behind him with a mop and a bucket. Rather than slippery soap, the buckets contain a water-bleach solution that dries quickly and is specialized for the train's flooring.

“My team knows my biggest pet peeve is dirty water,” said Williams, who started her BART career as an end-of-line cleaner. “They are changing it constantly. It has to be clean, and it has to be hot!”

The finishing touch: a spritz of lemon-scented air freshener.  

Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. Haley and Santos said they clean around three trains an hour, or forty trains a shift.  

End of line worker Lorinzo Haley waits for passengers to get off a train at Dublin/Pleasanton Station.

The job requires you to be in near-constant motion. While waiting for a train to arrive, the cleaners dispose of biohazards, refill their supplies, change their gloves, and most importantly, fill up those buckets with hot, clean water!  

When asked how many miles they walk each day, end-of-liner cleaner AJ Garman pulled out his phone and reported back: about 15,000 steps a day, equivalent to around 7 miles.  

It’s tough but rewarding work said Haley.  

“This is the best job I’ve ever had – and I’ve been working since I was 12,” the father of six said. “The sun is out, the air is fresh, and the hills are green. I want to come to work, and I have never said that about a job.” 

He and Santos said it’s not uncommon for regular riders to come up to them on the platform and say hello and thanks. Haley is no stranger to patron hugs, either.   

Said Santos: “I like when people who’ve never taken BART come up and ask me for help. It’s nice to know you’re making a difference.” About three minutes after saying this, a couple approached Santos and asked, “How do we get to the Financial District?” 

“Told you,” he said. 

Lorinzo waves to a train operator. 

Watch the team in action on this video 

BART’s efforts to enhance safety, cleanliness, and the customer experience are paying off as June 2025 saw a 13.4% increase in ridership over a year ago, bolstered by steadily growing weekend ridership.

Saturdays have seen some of the highest rates of ridership growth as people increasingly use the system to travel to events and activities on the weekends, including families and those who are now choosing to take transit over driving. Saturday ridership increased by 15.2% from May to June and was up 24.6% compared to a year ago. These increases were boosted thanks to local events, such as the June 14 “No Kings Day” protests, which marked the second highest day for Saturday ridership since the pandemic. June 29, the day of the San Francisco Pride Parade, saw the second highest Sunday for ridership since 2020. 

Additional ridership information is publicly available here.

While ridership continues to recover from post-pandemic declines due to remote work, these numbers demonstrate the effectiveness of BART’s Safe and Clean Plan, a series of strategic initiatives and investments that have doubled the rate of deep cleaning and resulted in a surge in BART PD’s visible safety presence on trains and in stations.  

These improvements are happening in concurrence with customer experience improvements, including running only new Fleet of the Future trains and system hardening efforts, led by the ongoing installation of its Next Generation Fare Gates. 

BART has also been strategically promoting non-work trips by partnering with local sports teams and organizations; sharing Rider Guides and social media videos describing how to take transit to events; and promoting non-work trips through efforts such as the BARTable website and newsletter. BART’s Fun Stuff program is an engagement effort that aims to educate riders, help us connect with the communities we serve, and build brand affinity, especially with younger riders. Our programs are getting people excited about transit and emphasizing the many places our system can take them.

BART transportation planner Kamala Parks is pictured in photos from the 1980s to present. Black and white photos courtesy of Murray Bowles. 

“Transit is punk,” according to Kamala Parks, Principal Station Planner at BART.  

Parks, of all people, would know.  

The transportation planner was a formative force in the Bay Area punk scene, particularly from the mid-1980s through the 1990s. This was an inflection point for punk, with bands like Green Day, Neurosis, and the Offspring making the leap from tiny scene venues to sold-out concert halls and stadiums.  

These iconic bands have at least two things in common. All of them are graduates of one of the most legendary punk venues of all time – 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley, often called Gilman by the punk community – and Parks played an early role in their success. 

Parks cofounded 924 Gilman – an all ages, collectively organized nonprofit music venue still going strong today – in 1986 as part of the MaximumRockNRoll ‘zine and collective spearheaded by Tim Yohannan. Getting the venue off the ground required wading through the leasing and zoning process, attending city hall meetings, and speaking with officials. The experience was Parks very first taste of urban planning, and it would come to serve her professionally many years later.  

So, Green Day...well, Parks was their first-ever band manager. Neurosis and the Offspring? She booked their first two national tours. The Offspring were the first to bring her on tour as their road manager, the first of many tour managing roles she did for multiple bands. 

When she wasn’t uplifting other bands, Parks was drumming for Cringer, the Gr’ups, Naked Aggression, and the aptly named Kamala & The Karnivores. If you saw the recent film Freaky Tales, you might have spotted a Kamala & The Karnivores patch stitched on the back of star Ji-young Yoo’s jacket.  

“Parks is a networker of East Bay punk,” a 2017 profile of her proclaimed, noting that she unknowingly designed “what would become a blueprint for DIY scenes worldwide.” 

A recent photo of Kamala Parks at Lake Merritt Station.  

In sum, Parks is a punk legend.  

Many of her BART coworkers have absolutely no idea. Rather, they know Parks from her planning efforts, like her work on BART's Transit-Oriented Development, her leadership on projects like Safe Trips to BART, and her role as the Station Area Planner from Orinda to Antioch. 

“Some folks are surprised I’m a punk rocker. They say I don’t look like one,” Parks said. “But I don’t have to look it. It’s my people, it’s a way of being in the world.”  

And transit, she said, is decidedly punk.  

"When you’re a punk, you love efficiency, sustainability, democracy,” she said. “Transit fulfills all these things.” 

Parks brings the spirit of punk to the workplace. When you’re a punk, if there’s an obstacle, you find a way to work around it. Low on resources? Figure it out. And most importantly, never take anything at face value, always question the status quo.  

“As a planner, I’m constantly asking myself things like, is there a reason this is the way it is? Can we revisit this? Reimagine it?"  

It’s a helpful vantage point for someone in her line of work. Crudely put, planners assess the present to construct the future. There’s a synergy with planning and punk, the music and movement known for holding a magnifying glass to the world and asking, “Why does it have to be like that?” 

“You don’t buy into the mainstream narrative as much when you’re a punk,” Parks said.  

Kamala Parks, pictured front right, circa late 1980s/early 1990s at a backyard gig in Pinole. Credit: Murray Bowles

Parks’ career was the least of her concerns as a free-spirited teenager growing up in Berkeley.  

“I was not exactly an ambitious kid,” she said. “When I was young, I wanted to be a cashier. They seemed to know everything – the price of an apple, the cost of a can of corn. This was way before the scanner. You had to enter all the prices manually! But as soon as the scanner rolled out, my dream was quashed.”  

Parks described her teenage years as “directionless.” She was a mediocre student at Berkeley High School, didn’t have a lot of friends or grand ambitions.  

What she did have was music. Parks recalled the summer before 11th grade when her dad left her in the care of one of his students from Diablo Valley College while he was on sabbatical in Europe. He gave the college kid $500 for Parks’ care and keeping. Not long after dad hit the road, the young woman and her boyfriend decided to spend the summer in Mexico, leaving Parks to fend for herself.  

“I came home from school one day and no one was home. But she had left the money on the table,” Parks recalled. “I immediately went to Telegraph [Avenue] and bought records and a Walkman. Needless to say, I spent that $500 in a very short amount of time.”  

“Music,” she went on, “was the thing that saved me as a kid. I cared about it so much, and I was beginning to have this incredible community in the punk scene full of very smart, supportive people.”  

But she had a bone to pick with Berkeley: All the cool live music venues in town were 21 and over. So 17-year-old Parks wrote a letter to the city council more or less asking, “What gives? There’s nothing for young people to do in this city. Why aren’t there any all-ages music venues?” 

That was the genesis of the idea that would eventually give birth to 924 Gilman.  

Left: Kamala and The Karnivores Girl Band EP, originally released on Lookout Records in 1989. Right: Kamala and The Karnivores second record, Vanity Project, released in 2018. 

Flash forwards a couple of years, and Parks and her cofounders are sitting in a city council meeting, ready to make the case for their venue.  

“The lightbulb did not go off that this sort of work was what I should be doing, not at all,” Parks said of urban planning. “I thought the city was being silly, asking things like, ‘Where will people park?’ And I said, ‘Parking? Who cares about parking!’”  

Parks argued that the industrial area already had ample street parking, and most people would carpool or use transit. The majority of her friends didn’t own cars.  

“We ended up rezoning the building for an entertainment permit,” she said. “At the time, it seemed like a bunch of hooey that we couldn’t have our club immediately. There was so much hoop jumping. I was definitely not inspired to pursue urban planning.” 

But there was a lesson in all of it.  

“The wonderful thing about youth is you’re not weighed down by past experiences that tell you what is and isn’t possible,” she said. “Fresh, questioning eyes are an asset."  

After Parks “barely” graduated high school, she worked at the Peet’s Coffee and Tea warehouse and other blue collar or service jobs to prioritize and fund the unpaid efforts of touring, booking tours and shows, playing music, and volunteering at Gilman. However, part-time studying at community colleges eventually led to her getting a math degree from a four-year college. Unsure of what to do next, she got her teaching credential. 

“Teaching was brutal,” she said. “I have so much respect for teachers. That is the hardest job I’ve ever had.” 

Before getting the credential, Parks had taken a few urban studies classes at San Francisco State and realized, “This is it! This is what I want to do!” 

But Parks wasn’t sure she wanted to spend more time in school to get a second bachelor's degree. And though she loved the field, she was sick of being poor and just wanted to start working. 

Her stint as a teacher lasted about two years, and Parks took some time to regroup working as a project assistant at a construction management company. While there, she discovered the urban studies flame still flickered inside her.  

Parks eventually decided to enroll in a grueling program at UC Berkeley, where she got two master’s degrees, one in civil engineering and one in city and regional planning.  

She went on to work in consulting and for the City of Berkeley. BART, however, was always the dream.  

Kamala drumming with Kamala and The Karnivores in 2017. Credit: Jonathan Botkin.  

“BART has a very special place in my heart and has been crucial to many aspects of my life,” she said.  

In 2018, after applying for years to any position she was qualified for, Parks finally got the call that she was selected for a planner role.  

She's never looked back. 

“There is rarely a day I wake up and say, ‘I don’t feel like going to work today,’” she said. “I just feel so lucky.”  

Parks wishes she had discovered transportation planning earlier. Growing up, she never thought of it as a profession or really knew that the field existed at all. Now, she’s doing her part to amend that for the next generation.  

“A few years ago, I went back to Berkeley High School for a lunch session called ‘How did you get that cool job?’ where I met with seniors and talked about what I do,” she said. “I wish someone had done that for me!”  

Through it all, the punk community has remained a constant force in her life. And she’s still involved with 924 Gilman, not as a booker or board member anymore, but as an attendee and an as-needed advisor. To this day, the venue hosts more than 20 nights of performances a month, often with bills consisting of five to six bands.  

Parks left an indelible mark on the Bay Area punk scene, and now, as a planner for BART, she gets to leave a different sort of legacy behind.  

"Planners come up with the ideas that spur improvements to connect communities,” she said.  

And that’s a through line in her life. Whether its music or street improvements, she wants more than anything to facilitate connections– to other people and to the spaces in which they gather.