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Beginning Wednesday, April 3, you'll hear the voices of some of BART’s biggest fans playing over our PA system. For the second year in a row, BART is celebrating Autism Acceptance Month by participating in the Autism Transit Project, which invites youth on the autism spectrum to record station announcements for transportation agencies around the nation. Jonathan Trichter, who runs multiple schools for children with autism and other neurological differences, spearheads the project.  

The recordings will play at 35 BART stations across the system every hour for the remainder of April. You can find the list of stations and listen to the recordings at the bottom of this announcement.  

“My name is Antoine, and the reason I like BART is because it gets me to my destination without traffic,” is one example of an announcement you may hear.  

Other announcements remind riders of BART rules and courtesy measures, like Bella's: "I love BART because it’s fun looking out the windows. Please remember to keep our train clean and offer your seat to someone in need. Have a fantastic day."  

Some participants kept things simple and gleefully shouted out their favorite things about BART. Said Cameron: "I love BART because they run the next-gen [trains], although I do miss the old boys.” 

In just two years, the Autism Transit Project has become a beloved tradition at BART. It is widely documented that some people with autism have an affinity for trains. Though it’s not entirely known why that is, experts believe the allure could be related to the repetitive and predictable natures of trains, as well as the visually and auditorily stimulating rhythms and patterns they produce as they run along the tracks and pull into stations. 

“Children with autism don’t always come to language naturally, the way neurotypical children do,” said Trichter, who started the Autism Transit Project in 2022. “They grab phrases where they are most focused and may repeat them the same way other kids babble. It is not unusual for the first sentence a child with autism utters to be a regular service announcement at transit stations — something we take for granted every day. For these kids, it is the language they first use to communicate with their family and peers. That’s why this project is so very meaningful to them. I’d like to thank BART for letting these beautiful children be heard. “ 

To record their announcements, participants were invited to BART Headquarters, where the BART Communications team recorded their statements in a soundproof room with professional microphones and equipment. The children also did on-camera interviews after their recording sessions, which will be featured in an upcoming video.

When they weren’t recording, participants listened to presentations in the BART Boardroom from BART General Manager Bob Powers, Manager of Scheduling and Services John FitzGibbon, and Transportation Supervisor Casey Unger. They also rotated between different tables set up around the room, which were run by energetic BART staff. The stations included a table with tactile equipment from around the BART system, including a piece of rail; a dress-up station with real uniforms from a variety of BART jobs, such as train operators and station agents; a crafting table; and a capsule ball machine where participants won BART-themed prizes.  

We hope you enjoy the announcements. 

Announcements 

The child’s name and the stations where their announcement is playing are listed below. To listen, click on the blue hyperlink. 

Antoine – Fremont and Milpitas  

Bella – Castro Valley and Civic Center  

Brian – North Berkeley 

Calvin – Balboa Park 

Cameron B. – 19th St. Oakland and Pleasant Hill 

Cameron C. – Pittsburgh/Bay Point and West Oakland 

Curtis – South Hayward 

Damian – Fruitvale and MacArthur 

Eden – Lafayette and Walnut Creek 

Emmett – 24th St. Mission and Downtown Berkeley 

Isaias – Bay Fair and El Cerrito del Norte 

Joseph – Berryessa and Millbrae 

King – Lake Merritt 

Liam – Concord and Orinda 

Lucy – Glen Park and Montgomery St. 

Max – Coliseum and Powell St. 

Milo – 12th St. Oakland and SFO 

Nita – Rockridge and Union City 

Robert – Daly City and Embarcadero 

Serenity – San Leandro 

On Monday, March 2, BART rolled out new fare gate tones that are more pleasing and audible over station background noise, making stations more welcoming and simpler to navigate, especially for blind and low-vision riders. 

The new “chime” tones play when riders hold their fare media (Clipper card, contactless bank card, or mobile payments) on the reader for an additional second and are intended to inform blind and low-vision customers that the fare gate is open to pass through. An ascending chime plays on entering and a descending chime plays on exiting. 

The chime tone is also easier to distinguish from the beep sound the fare gates generate for errors, such as insufficient funds. This chime tone does not play automatically every time someone taps their fare media as this would create a cacophony in the station and make it difficult to know if a specific fare gate were open.

BART’s old fare gates previously used beeps to indicate the fare gates were open because they were among the few sounds the dated technology could produce. BART’s new fare gates, which were installed at all stations in August 2025, can produce a wider range of tones.

Seizing this opportunity, BART staff developed the new chime tone and collected feedback from the BART Accessibility Task Force (BATF), BART Station Agents, and an online survey during a pilot period at three stations.  

Ryan Greene-Roesel, BART Director of Customer Access and Accessibility, is a musician and developed the distinctive chime chords on her piano.  BART’s sound engineers then input the chords into a digital program that let the team generate various iterations before the final iteration was selected.  

“We hope customers and station staff enjoy the new tones as we continue to work hard to improve the BART experience for all of our riders,” Greene-Roesel said. 

For more info on accessibility at BART, visit bart.gov/accessibility.  

(Photos from left to right: Tera Stokes-Hankins at her Station Agent graduation in 1995; Tera handing Station Agent Michael Francis a certificate of recognition at a recent employee appreciation event.)

During Black History Month each February, BART honors the history and contributions of our Black employees, including trailblazers like Tera Stokes-Hankins, the first woman to serve as BART's Chief Transportation Officer. You'll find her "BART story" below. 

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Tera Stokes-Hankins joined BART in the summer of 1995 as a twentysomething near-fresh out of college. Back then, she worked part time as a Station Agent at El Cerrito Plaza Station. Today – 28 years later – she oversees not only El Cerrito Plaza, but all of BART’s stations, service and delivery of day-to-day operations, and the agency’s train operations, Station Agents, and Train Operators. Following an impressive six promotions, including one in 2023, Tera now serves as BART’s Chief Transportation Officer – one of the highest-ranking positions within the organization. She is the first woman to hold the title at the organization. 

“What’s kept me here so long? The people, the relationships I’ve built, and the work is fun!” she said speaking recently on a rare break between operational meetings and field visits, during which she makes sure “we’re running the service we have promised the public.”  

She credits her success to a lifelong love of people and her constant striving to be fair and honest.  

“And I couldn’t have done it without my team. They are BART,” she said.  

Tera grew up in Oakland and still lives there with her family. It never occurred to her to apply for a job at BART. In college, Tera majored in computer systems information and business administration. When BART came calling, she was working an entry-level position at the Federal Reserve in San Francisco and figured she’d be there awhile.  

“My father was trying to get a job at BART, and he saw a listing for part-time Station Agents,” she recalled. “That led my mother to tell me I had to apply.” 

Tera got the job and decided to accept the position. The rest, as they say, is history.  

Every promotion since, she’s called her mom to thank her for that initial push to apply.  

“I wouldn’t be here if she didn’t tell me take this job,” she said. 

As for her dad? “He didn’t get the gig,” she said with a laugh.  

Tera’s days are not without their challenges; being the Chief Transportation Officer is arguably one of the most stressful gigs in transit. What gets her out of bed each morning is knowing “that we are providing an absolutely essential service to the Bay Area and the people who rely on us.”  

“My employees are counting on me, and my family is counting on me, too,” she said. “If BART’s not running, that means people can’t get to an interview or an appointment or class. To get up every day and make sure we’re ready to go and putting our best foot forward – that keeps me going,” 

She also credits her husband with helping her stay grounded. 

“It helps me in my day to day to have someone I can bounce ideas and situations off of,” she said. “He tells me when I’m right and when I’m wrong – especially when I’m wrong.” 

BART is a workplace that seeks to support and elevate its employees to achieve their dreams and rise to their professional aspirations. Tera said she has been consistently uplifted by her mentors, BART’s training and educational opportunities, and the many managers who have supported her in her rise through the ranks. 

“Us managers at BART have a lot to offer,” she said, reflecting. “We are just waiting for our employees to come and ask us how to grow and expand their knowledge.” 

Over the past three decades, Tera has hit many of her most major life milestones while working at BART. In her first year at BART, she got married. Not long after that, she had her first child, and later, her second.  

She now does for her daughter what her mom once did for her. 

“I’ll see opportunities and go, ‘Baby, you should apply for this!’” The approach has paid off so far, she said. 

We invite you to read BARTable's suggestions for honoring and celebrating Black History Month here and to explore One Book One BART's Black History Month Reading List, which highlights a selection of books that illuminate and educate readers about the experiences of Black Americans, especially in the Bay Area. 

BART employees: Later in the month, you will receive an invitation via District Announcements for a special Black History Month event hosted by the Employee Resource Group.

Updated May 22, 2025

On May 22, 2025, the BART Board of Directors were given updates about two service disruptions. The video is posted above. They talked about this incident as well as the incident on May 20, 2025 when an electrical fault started a fire near the San Leandro Station causing a major service outage in parts of the East Bay. 

Regular BART service resumed at around 9am this morning, Friday, May 9, following an earlier problem that prevented trains from being safely dispatched for passenger service, which typically takes place at 5am on weekdays. 

The root cause of the disruption was related to network devices having intermittent connectivity. Staff in the Operations Control Center lacked the visibility of the track circuits and the train positions necessary for safe operations. Visibility of this system in the Operations Control Center is required to run service.  

BART issued its first service advisory at 4:30am, alerting the public that BART service was suspended systemwide until further notice.   

BART’s Network Engineering team identified and isolated a redundant sector of the network that was causing intermittent visibility and disconnected it. This allowed service to begin. The East Bay section of the BART system began running passenger trains first, shortly before 9am, and systemwide service began just before 9:30am. 

During the period when there was no BART service, BART’s leadership sent extra staff who usually work at headquarters to stations across the system to alert people as they arrived that there was no BART service. Calls were made to bus agencies asking them to scale up their service as much as possible and to offer free rides from our stations. The San Francisco Bay Ferry deployed their larger vessels to help. BART General Manager Robert Powers was inside the Operations Control Center to receive rapid updates and monitor performance.  

“We apologize for the disruptive morning and not having train service to get people where they need to go,” said Powers. “Reliability is our brand, and we understand the impact when the system isn’t working. This came down to the fact our control room did not have visibility of our system, and we will not run service if we can’t guarantee safety. We will learn from this incident and are committed to continuous improvement. We are grateful to our partner transit agencies who were able to help our riders this morning.” 

BART does not anticipate this issue further impacting service today. Crews will continue to investigate all related equipment and if equipment replacement or repairs are necessary.

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.

Open House boards with more info on proposed Hayward TOD - English | Chinese | Spanish

Share your feedback - take the survey (closes 5/15/26)

BART is hosting a pair of community Open House events at Hayward Station to encourage riders and community members to share input and ideas for a potential Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). BART and the City of Hayward have been collaborating to lay the groundwork for selecting a developer for a transit-oriented, mixed-use, mixed-income development at Hayward Station. 

The Open Houses will be held on Wednesday, May 6, from 4:30pm to 6:30pm and Tuesday, May 12, from 7:30am to 9:30am at Hayward Station in the covered, unpaid concourse area (before you enter through the fare gates).  

BART is hosting the Open Houses to share information and receive feedback from the public on their priorities for the potential TOD. Members of the public are encouraged to drop by at any time during the Open Houses.  BART staff will be on hand to answer questions, and translation will be provided in Spanish and Chinese.  

The final goals and objectives for the development will be presented to the BART Board of Directors for approval and included in the developer solicitation. 

What is planned for Hayward Station? The project aims to bring housing for people of various income levels as well as ground floor commercial spaces and public amenities to the following three sites: 

1. A surface parking lot and driveway to the parking garage on the west side of the station. TOD will preserve and enhance access to the station and to the parking garage, which will remain in operation. 
2. A vacant lot on the north side of the station between A, B, and Montgomery streets.   
3. Passenger and bus loading areas and designated parking for people with disabilities, on the east side of the station. Should this third site be selected for development, the TOD will reconfigure the site to preserve loading areas and parking for people with disabilities. 

BART intends to begin looking for a developer after finalizing the goals and objectives. Once a developer is chosen they, along with BART and the City of Hayward, will continue to engage with BART riders, community members, and other stakeholders throughout the TOD design and permitting process. 

What if I can’t attend these Open Houses? You can review the Open House boards and provide your thoughts in an online survey (closes May 15, 2026). You may also sign up for the project email list to keep informed of future engagement opportunities by entering your information in the sign-up box below.

Questions? Email Principal Property Development Officer Shannon Dodge at [email protected].  

* denotes required field.

"Some people read, some people work, some people apply makeup,” says Joanna Sokua of riding BART. “I draw.”  

Since 2017, Sokua has been creating what she calls “BARToons” during her morning and evening commute. You might say she is a seasoned BARTist. In the past seven years, she has drawn more than 170 BART illustrations. While on the train, she snaps photos of scenes and passengers that spark an idea, and when she gets home, she’ll sketch them out or, most often, superimpose pop culture figures onto the images using a digital pen.  

The drawings depict Scooby Doo and Shaggy waiting for a train; Van Gough seated near the doors with a pipe and bandage over his ear; Doc Brown and Marty McFly from Back to the Future standing on a legacy train; Clark Kent looking at his phone with his Superman suit peeking out. Sometimes, she’ll just draw a passenger as they are, sitting on the train engrossed in whatever they’re doing. 

Sokua works in banking, helping small business owners secure financing for their ventures. She is one of many artists who have been inspired by their BART rides, from photographers roused by the system's striking angles to novelists who wrote their books almost entirely onboard. There have even been plays set on BART trains. 

On her BART ride from the East Bay to her office in San Francisco, Sokua is not thinking about her data-and-dollars day job. Mostly, she’s looking for subjects to draw. The creative exercise helps her unwind, and it’s deeply entertaining for those who keep up with her work on her Instagram (@the_und3rwrit3r), where she regularly posts her latest drawings.  

The artist said she doesn’t board a train with an idea for her next drawing. She simply waits for inspiration to strike. 

“People always ask me how I decide what to draw,” she said. “It just comes to me. I see something, and I know exactly what I want to do.” A drawing of Jack Sparrow was born after seeing a fellow rider in a headband on her train, for example.  

BART proves ripe for inspiration because “you see people from all walks of life,” Sokua said. She’s even made friends onboard.  

“I take the same train every day at the same time. You see the same people over and over,” she said. “It becomes a sort of community actually." 

Most of the time, people don’t know Sokua has used them for a drawing, though sometimes they find themselves or their loved ones on her Instagram page. One memorable instance was when she drew a man who “looked like Jesus” sitting next to a woman praying over a rosary. It's one of her favorite drawings, least of all because the man’s wife saw the drawing on Instagram and commented, “That’s my personal Jesus!” Once, she drew an Oscar the Grouch cartoon, and the person operating the train found the image on Facebook, commenting something to the effect of, “Hey! I was operating that train!”  

Sokua said she creates her BARToons to “make people laugh and make their rides more fun.”  

She doesn’t want to offend with her drawings, she just thinks everyone can always use a healthy dash of humor in their day.  

“You might as well make the most of your commute,” she said, adding that she “100% recommends” doodling on BART.

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.

Effective Monday, October 5, 2026, Customer Services operating hours will change to streamline operations and provide more consistent service hours. 

The BART Customer Services Center @ Lake Merritt Station will now be open until 5:00pm. 

The new hours are:

Monday- Friday: 8:30 AM- 5:00 PM
1st week of the month: 8:30 AM- 6:00 PM (pilot extended hours)
3rd Wednesday of the month: 8:30 AM- 12:00 PM (early closure for operational needs)

Closed for all observed holidays

The Customer Services Office, where riders can call in with comments, inquires, concerns, praises, or to report a maintenance issue, will now follow the same 8:30 AM- 5:00 PM to schedule as the Customer Services Center @ Lake Merritt Station. Call the office at 510-464-7134. It also has a 24/7 voicemail.

The Transit Information Center's hours will remain the same: 8:00 AM- 6:00 PM, Monday - Friday