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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 

The Let's Glow! BART Anime Festival returns to Warm Springs/South Fremont Station on September 19, 2026, 4pm to 9pm, for a celebration of anime, comics, gaming, and novel (ACGN) culture. We’ll announce more details on cosplay, itashas, freebie trading, stamps, exclusive merch, a detailed schedule, and more in the next few months!

In the meantime, BART is looking for BART fan projects, fan clubs, community fan events/spaces, transit operators, or public services to table at the event. You must be able to table for the required time (4pm to 7:30pm; optional tabling hours are 7:30pm to 9pm). Tabling at this event is free. 

Fill out the community table application here. The application closes August 1. 

More Let's Glow! opportunities: 

• Itashas: We will have a parking lot dedicated to wrapped vehicles (cars, bikes, mopeds, etc) managed by Dreamscape. An application form will be posted in June.
• Do you run a food or boba truck on wheels? We’re especially interested in having local vendors who can make custom food & drinks themed around our mascots or BART. Please reach out to Tom Williams at [email protected]. 
• Note: The artist alley application has closed. 

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. 

In celebration of Transit Month 2023, the Bay Area transit agencies and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) are hosting a third “All Aboard with Transit CEOs,” a ride-along and social event giving the public a chance to ride with and meet regional transit leaders. The event is also an opportunity for transit leaders to call for on-going financial support for transit operations and to showcase the coordination happening among agencies to improve the rider experience in the Bay Area.

The event is Friday, September 29, 2023, starting at 5pm at the Palo Alto Caltrain Station/Transit Center. The Palo Alto Transit Center is an intermodal transit center served by Caltrain, SamTrans, VTA, Dumbarton Express, the Stanford University Marguerite Shuttle and several local shuttle services. 

Trip details:

Before 5pm: The public and Transit CEOs will come from different transit systems, connecting with the public along their route to the Palo Alto Caltrain Station/Transit Center.

5pm:  The public and Transit CEOs meet at the Palo Alto Transit Center (Caltrain Northbound Platform to San Francisco) for photos and mingling.
5:19pm – Everyone boards Caltrain #709 for an onboard Happy Hour (BYOB)
5:44pm – Train arrives at Millbrae Transit Center (100 California Drive, Millbrae)
6:03pm – The Ride-a-long ends as the train arrives at San Francisco Caltrain Station (700 4th Street, San Francisco)

Members of the public and the media are invited to ride for the full or partial journey. This event is a great opportunity for the public to chat with CEOs about transit service and transit career opportunities. Follow on social media for real time updates of the CEOs journey.  

Participating CEOs include:  SamTrans (April Chan), Caltrain (Michelle Bouchard), VTA (Carolyn Gonot), MUNI (Jeff Tumlin), BART (Bob Powers), WETA/SF Bay Ferry (Seamus Murphy), County Connection (Bill Churchill), and LAVTA/Wheels (Christy Wegener). 

The CEOs will be taking transit to the Palo Alto Caltrain Station and posting on social media using the #TransitMonth hash tag. Several CEOs will announce their routes to get to Palo Alto Transit Center if you want to join them on the journey. 

BART General Manager Bob Powers will take BART's Red Line to Millbrae leaving 19th Street Station at 2:57pm and transfer to Caltrain at 4:02pm

SamTrans CEO April Chan will ride ECR leaving San Carlos Ave / El Camino Street at 4pm 

Caltrain Executive Director Michelle Bouchard will ride Caltrain #410 leaving San Carlos Station at 4:48pm

VTA CEO Carolyn Gonot will ride the VTA Blue Line from River Oaks Station leaving at 3:45, changing trains at Baypointe to the 4 pm Orange Line to Mountain View. Then Caltrain #309 departing Mountain View at 4:40 pm

Meet BART on the pitch for a special Oakland Roots match celebrating transit at the Oakland Coliseum on Saturday, July 26. 

Before kickoff at 1pm, BART invites you to join a fan parade from Coliseum Station across the bridge to the stadium. To get in on the fun, meet BART staff at the station near the bridge between noon and 12:30pm. The parade will begin at 12:30pm. 

The Roots are also offering a special discoount. Use the promo code BART to save 20% on Roots tickets for this and all other Roots games.

Purchase discounted tickets to the match here.  

The BART Title Game match will be played against Orange County SC at the Oakland Coliseum, just steps from BART’s Coliseum Station. The Oakland Roots compete in the United Soccer League (USL) Championship, which features 24 teams across the United States.  

Similar to the Oakland Ballers’ recent Public Transit Night, the Roots’ BART Title Game will feature BART throughout the afternoon. Planned BART activities include the fan parade, photos with the BARTmobile, and surprises. And did we mention Oakland rapper and singer Kamaiyah is playing the BART Halftime show? 

Driving ridership through sports partnerships  

The BART Title Game is part of BART Marketing’s efforts to boost ridership and foster stronger ties with local communities through strategic partnerships. BART partners with over 250 local organizations annually, helping to significantly expand the reach of our messaging. These partnerships come at no cost to BART and promote that taking BART is fun, in addition to being convenient, inexpensive, and environmentally friendly. 

Since the pandemic, ridership on nights and weekends is growing faster than commute ridership. While people may not be going into the office as often as they used to, they are going to games, shows, museums, and other fun events that can only be experienced in person. Our partnerships lean into this.  

Discover more BARTable fun at bart.gov/bartable and check out our Rider Guides page with tips for how to get to local sports and entertainment venues by BART.  

On Saturday, August 8, BART Deputy General Manager Michael Jones invites riders to explore the inner workings of BART and the equipment that keeps it running for Tool Time with the BART Deputy General Manager, in the Fremont Station north parking lot from 10am to 12:30pm. 

The free all-ages event will be held beside an active construction area, where BART is currently working to replace a vital interlocking nearing the end of its lifespan. The "Machines of BART," a series of equipment and vehicles BART uses to build, maintain, and run the system, will be on display for the day, giving families the rare opportunity to see things like high railers, a vactor truck, a speed swing, and other cool tools up close, with staff on hand to answer questions. 

A highlight of the day is a live crane demo, featuring the project’s massive Bigge crane -- the second largest of its kind on the West Coast! The demo will take place at 11am.  

Other activities include a BART Police K9 demonstration, BART engineer show-and-tell tables, a Railgoods BART Merch pop-up shop, and more. The event will also give attendees the chance to meet and ask questions of BART Deputy General Manager Michael Jones and members of BART’s dedicated workforce. 

Tool Time will be held in the Fremont Station Parking Lot next to the construction area on the north side of the station, which is currently an active construction laydown area where crews are working to replace the interlocking between Union City and Fremont stations. Interlockings are fail-safe systems that allow trains to safety cross from one track to another. Come see for yourself! 

What: Tool Time with BART Deputy General Manager Michael Jones 

When: Saturday, August 8, 10am to 12:30pm 

Where: Fremont Station (2000 BART Way, Fremont), north parking lot beside the construction area

IMPORTANT - If you are driving and parking, the Mowry Ave./Waterside Circle parking lot entrance will be closed during the event. Enter the north lot from Walnut Ave. or the south lot via BART Way.  

Parking is free at BART stations on weekends. Taking BART is encouraged. 

Free and open to all ages. 

Restrooms and water onsite; wear sunscreen and a hat. 

Just in time for National Poetry Month, BART has unveiled BART Lines: 826 Valencia, a partnership between the agency and local literary nonprofit that brings a selection of BART-themed 826 Valencia student poems and short stories to BART’s five Short Story Dispensers (locations below) and online at bart.short-edition.com. 

Four pieces are also being featured in advertising spaces on BART train cars to bring joy and wonder to customers’ rides.  

More than 100 students ranging in age from 9 to 18 participated in the project, which was developed by 826 Valencia and centers BART as both inspiration and subject.

The resulting poems and short stories capture young writers’ perspectives on transit, community, and everyday Bay Area life. BART previously partnered with 826 Valencia for the BART Lines: Teen Poetry Contest in 2024. 

For many students, this will be the first time their work is formally published outside of 826 Valencia.

BART's free Short Story Dispensers are located at the following stations:  

• Balboa Park 

• Downtown Berkeley 

• Fruitvale 

• Pleasant Hill 

• San Leandro (new!) 

To read a BART Lines: 826 Valencia work, simply wave your hand over the 5-minute (or “Local Authors”) button, and a story will be dispensed on eco-friendly, recyclable paper. 

To increase accessibility to literary works for all riders, BART’s Short Story Dispensers will soon offer free audio stories, allowing riders to listen on their phones by scanning a QR code on the machine.

The collaboration with 826 Valencia builds on BART’s history of celebrating creativity in transit spaces. In recent years, the agency has hosted writing and poetry contests, featured rider-submitted work in stations and online, and used arts programming to make stations more welcoming and community-centered.

“The notion of mixing poetry and other literary forms with transit is not new. New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, to name a few, all have programs. What makes the BART program so engaging is our commitment to featuring local writers – especially our youth writers,” said BART Art Program Manager Jennifer Easton, whose department launched the dispensers in collaboration with BART Communications. “We love sharing their creativity with our riders, and giving their voices a platform on our Short Edition story dispensers and website is particularly meaningful – and particularly Bay Area.” 

“At 826 Valencia, we believe our students write a better future for all of us,” said Bita Nazarian, Executive Director of 826 Valencia. “Through this partnership with BART, we’re celebrating the creativity and insight of our future leaders as they reflect on what it means to move through the Bay Area. Their stories transform everyday commutes into moments of connection, wonder, and belonging. 

“Bringing the voices of local youth into our stations and trains through their own words is a powerful way to activate public space and connect riders to the Bay Area’s rich stories,” said Michelle Robertson, Principal Marketing Representative with BART Communications. “The creativity and insight students brought to the 826 Valencia curriculum — with BART as their muse — reminds us that transit is more than movement; it’s context for community, connection, and imagination.” 

Since its first day of service, BART has viewed its stations and trains as shared civic spaces. Arts and literary programs help transform wait times into meaningful moments, highlight local talent, and create a more welcoming, human-centered environment for riders. By supporting community voices, especially young riders, BART aims to strengthen connection, creativity, and a sense of belonging across the spectrum of communities the system serves. 

About 826 Valencia 

826 Valencia is a San Francisco–based nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting under-resourced students ages six to eighteen with their creative and expository writing skills and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. They have three writing centers in San Francisco: in the Mission, Tenderloin, and Mission Bay. Learn more at 826valencia.org.