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BART Rider Thank You Sweepstakes
Win a trip for four to Japan, courtesy of VIZ Media! Enter today for a chance to win the Grand Prize in the BART Rider Thank You sweepstakes. One lucky family will win a trip for four to Japan, courtesy of VIZ Media! Prize includes airfare and hotel for four. (Retail Value $10,000.) Visit VIZ Media's website
The Heart of BART: Electrician Mark Carter
BART Electrician Mark Carter reports for work at 11 pm each weeknight and toils through the wee hours of the morning. He’s done it for 33 years. You might imagine that when Mark is not on the job he would spend much of his free time catching up on his sleep. But he doesn’t. He’s on a quest: to help people who
BART Police arrest stabbing suspect
Oakland – BART police yesterday arrested Cole Chaquan Wright, suspected of committing a stabbing six days ago at the Bay Fair Station. A BART PD Detective was at the station alerting officers who patrol the area to be on the lookout for Wright when Wright was spotted by the Detective. The 20-year-old Berkeley
BART Service Alerts - Terms of Service
BART Service Alerts - Short Code 732278 Terms of Service When you opt-in to the service, we will send you a message to confirm your signup. Text " START" to 732278 to receive BART Service Alerts. Message and data rates may apply. You will receive up to five (5) message per week. Text "HELP" for help. Text
BART outlines current contract offers
Throughout these negotiations the District has made significant movement with our proposals. We doubled our salary proposal to an 8% unconditional raise over four years and removed all contingencies so that these raises will occur no matter what is happening with the economy. We’ve lowered our pension
Take BART and "Dine About Town"
Hungry? BART is your ticket to the 6th Annual "Dine About Town" in San Francisco this month. The San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau (SFCVB) and Visa will once again offer the popular prix-fixe restaurant promotion for the entire month of January. More than one hundred of San Francisco's finest
Behind the scenes with a BART maintenance crew
Catch a glimpse of what we’re doing to make your commute swift and smooth, with a behind-the-scenes tour featuring some of the crewmembers who will be working on the upcoming track maintenance weekend project. Workers will soon be replacing over 1,000 degraded wooden ties and 3,000 feet of worn rail between
BART Connects: BART takes a second-year college student to her dream school
Kassandra Santillan pictured at Daly City Station, where she disembarks to get to her classes at SFSU.
Do you have a favorite BART memory or story to share? Email a short summary to BART Storyteller Michelle Robertson at [email protected], and she may follow up to schedule an interview.
In August, Kassandra Santillan started her second year at San Francisco State University, her dream college where she studies microbiology, her dream major. If she couldn’t take BART to school, she wouldn’t be able to attend.
“BART made it happen for me,” she said. “I can’t afford to live near campus, so I’d probably be at a community college instead.”
Santillan is the first person in her immediate family to attend college. She’s always aspired to study at SFSU because that's where her aunt went, and her aunt was one of the only people she knew who graduated from college.
Santillan lives in East Oakland, where she grew up. She doesn’t currently have access to a car, so she takes BART twice a day, five days a week to school. Before starting at SFSU, she’d never really used the system.
“We didn’t travel far away when I was young,” she said. “The only other time I’d use BART was for field trips to San Francisco."
Growing up, Santillan often “felt really suffocated.” She’d hear stories of people going to Union Square at Christmastime or the mall at Powell Street, but “it wasn’t accessible to me.”
“I never really got out much before,” she said. “BART opened the Bay to me. I had no idea it was so easy to get to all these great places.” Now, she takes BART pretty much everywhere. In addition to school, she’ll ride the train to the mall in Milpitas or the Embarcadero, where she walks the waterfront to Pier 39 and back.
Santillan treasures her time on the train. She’ll do some drawing, finish up assignments, and sometimes just chill out.
“Every day is so hectic as a college student,” she said. “Commuting is my time to unwind.”
When she graduates, Santillan wants to be a clinical lab scientist. She’s wanted to be a scientist since meeting one in elementary school during career day.
“I remember at the end of the day they asked everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up. Most of them said teacher or a doctor,” she said. “I was one of the few who wanted to be a scientist.”
“It’s pretty crazy to be studying in the field now,” she said. “It feels unreal sometimes. I know a lot of people who don’t get this opportunity.”
Sometimes, she has to remind herself: “I’m really here, and I’m really doing this thing I’ve been trying to do all my life.”
About the BART Connects Storytelling Series
The BART Connects storytelling series was launched in 2023 to showcase the real people who ride and rely on BART and illustrate the manifold ways the system affects their lives. You can follow the ongoing series at bart.gov/news.
The series grew out of BART's Role in the Region Study, which demonstrates BART’s importance to the Bay Area’s mobility, cultural diversity, environmental and economic sustainability. We conducted a call for stories to hear from our riders and understand what BART means to them. The call was publicized on our website, social media, email blasts, and flyering at stations. More than 300 riders responded, and a selection of respondents who opted-in were interviewed for the BART Connects series.