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Michelle Slade (left) and Maria Chappell (right) hard at work scrubbing and power washing the entrance of South Hayward Station during an overnight deep clean. Each BART station is deep cleaned every few months.  

Watch a short video of the cleaning process here.

Maria Chappell, a longtime overnight station cleaner at BART, has a series of photos stored on her phone of a station platform, wedged among images of her kids and grandchildren. The photos show almost nothing but the floor, and intentionally so.  

Chappell snapped the imagery on a recent weeknight after hours of scrubbing, sealing, and waxing the floors with fellow cleaning crew members. If you visit the station in person and look down, you can almost see your face reflected back at you; the flooring truly glitters and gleams after one of these regular, and labor-intensive, deep cleans.  

It’s hard work to make BART’s well-trafficked stations sparkle and shine. Each day, hundreds of people pass through, carrying dirt and grime on the soles of their shoes, along with trash, gum, and dust.  

Maria Chappell power washes the stairs. 

Chappell and her colleagues spend eight hours a night, working from 10pm to 6am, to make sure that riders travel through clean stations when the sun rises each day. They’re the late-night crew that takes care of the deep cleaning of stations – tasks that can’t be done during the day when scores of riders are passing through.  

Every station is cleaned throughout the day when the stations are open to the public. These cleaners handle tasks like picking up waste and mopping and disinfecting, including high-use areas like stairs, escalators, handrails, bathrooms, and Add Fare machines.  

Recently, BART doubled the frequency of overnight station deep cleans. These thorough cleans can take workers one to two weeks to complete, and each station in the system will get one every few months, depending on the station’s needs and busyness. BART also recently doubled the frequency of train car deep cleans. 

Dirt is blasted off stairs with the hot steam power washer, then the water is squeegeed into a nearby drain.  

Cleaners must be detail-oriented while also focusing on the big picture. Overnight cleaners begin their eight-hour shifts at 10pm. At that time, until the station closes around 1am, the cleaners will focus on the concourse and stairs, escalators and elevators, and public restrooms. They surround the work area with orange cones and caution tape to ensure passengers stay safe and out of the way. For safety reasons, platforms are cleaned only when the stations are closed for the night.  

The stairs and floors are always the dirtiest parts of the station, for obvious reasons. But the workers clean the entire station, scrubbing and power washing everything from the stairs and station walls, including metal paneling, to the restrooms. Smaller, more sensitive surfaces are washed and disinfected by spraying a cleaning agent on a rag and scrubbing manually. Bleach is used very minimally, solely for biohazard incidents.  

The shining platform floors at Hayward Station after cleaners scrubbed, sealed, and waxed them. 

The floor cleaning process, however, is the piece de resistance. Below is a snapshot of the procedure, which is used for station entrances, concourses, and platforms: 

1. Floors are dust mopped to capture loose dirt and dust bunnies.  
2. Cleaners run the magnum floor scrubber – a small Zamboni-like machine that’s operated manually – to scrub away socked-in grime and old floor sealant. Sometimes, an alkaline stripper is used to break up seriously caked-in dirt.  
3. Next, it’s time for the steam power washer, which reaches temperatures of 120 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, and blasts away grime the magnum scrubber breaks up.  
4. The water from the power washer is squeegeed into drains. The stairs and floors are dried with dry mops.  

The above process is done every few weeks. But every four to six months – one to two months at busy stations – cleaners seal and wax the floors to keep dirt from building up and to make them sparkle. They use mops to carefully layer multiple coats of sealer, which keeps dirt from building up on the floor. Then, they mop multiple layers of wax onto the flooring to make it shine.  

A Foreworker oversees the process, assigning tasks based on priority and ensuring the crews are working to meet BART’s high standards.  

The Foreworker overseeing Chappell’s crew is Wendy Salazar, who started at BART nearly a decade ago as an overnight cleaner herself. The regular crew includes Chappell, Michelle Slade, Lynn Ensminger, and Josh Brown. They refer to themselves as “the Fremont Crew.”  

Foreworker Wendy Salazar is pictured behind a fare gate at South Hayward Station. 

Luis Villatoro, the Assistant Superintendent of System Service (the department that oversees cleaning), said Foreworkers with hands-on experience like Salazar are major assets to their crews.  

“She knows the process, how to get the work done, and how to run the machines,” he said.  

Like many BART employees, Salazar’s path to BART is a story in and of itself. Salazar graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in theater. At the time she applied to BART, she said she was “really just looking for a job that had insurance.”  

But the work and her fellow crew members made a deep impact on her. In the nine years she’s been with BART, she has seen herself mature.  

“I started here at 22,” she said. “I’ve basically grown up at BART.”  

As a cleaner, she said her colleagues gave her a lot of guidance, support, and encouragement. A Foreworker told her early in her career that they could see her as the boss in a few years. 

“And here we are,” she said. 

Sudsy water is power washed away near the Add Fare Machines.  

Salazar said the public might be surprised to learn how many components go into station cleaning and the specialized skills it requires. Cleaners at BART are trained for two-and-a-half weeks in a classroom setting, as well as on the job.  

Salazar said her staff take immense pride in their work.  

“On the overnight shift, you handle the bigger projects, and you get to immediately see the results,” she said. “Cleaners get to say, ‘Hey, I did that!’”  

Or, like Chappell, they snap a photo to remind themselves of their hard work and the gratification of a job well done.  

Michael Cox, a Principal Performance Analyst in BART’s Sustainability Department, grew up gardening with his mom and recycling with his dad in New York.

“My parents were farmers when they were kids, and they always taught me the importance of protecting the environment and being one with your surroundings,” Cox said recently during an interview at BART Headquarters.

When Cox was studying environmental science at Stanford University, he realized he was especially passionate about climate change. Fieldwork wasn’t for him – “I just wasn’t very good at it,” he said – so he decided to “attack the issue using a computer, with data.”

Read more about Cox’s unique role at BART and how he uses data to support the District’s sustainability efforts. And check out the 2022 Sustainability Report here, published today, which highlights BART's efforts to support and enhance sustainability within the BART system and region. Says General Manger Robet Powers: "BART is one of the greenest options for Bay Area residents traveling around the region."

1. How long have you worked for BART?

I have worked at BART for 3.5 years.

2. What’s your role at BART?

I am a Principal Performance Analyst in the Sustainability Department. I calculate our energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, water use, and waste generation, and I implement programs that can improve our performance in those areas.

3. If you can remember, what is your earliest memory of riding the trains?

My earliest memory of riding BART was during undergrad. I attended Stanford, and I needed to go to Berkeley to do some research at farmers markets. I took Caltrain to Millbrae and then BART to Berkeley. I remember being confused whether BART was an urban subway or commuter train, but now I know it’s kind of like both!

4. What’s something that might surprise us about your job?

I think a lot of times in the sustainability field, you get pushback from folks afraid of change and adjusting their behavior. We’re really lucky in California that people are already pretty aware of the challenges we face in terms of climate change and environmental pollution. It’s nice to have coworkers and members of the public that are really supportive of the work we do and excited by the progress we’re making.

5. Name your favorite BART station or route and tell us why you like it. 

My favorite BART station is Lake Merritt. It was the station closest to me when I lived in Oakland, and I loved how convenient it was to get to downtown Oakland or the lake. There’s a lot of nice scenery in the area.

My favorite line is definitely the Oakland Airport Connector. It’s just nifty to ride on!

6. What do you typically do to pass the time on the train?

Usually, I play games on my phone. I’m playing Wordle or Spelling Bee from the New York Times, or I’m playing Fire Emblem Heroes, which is a strategy role-playing game.

7. What’s on your desk besides your computer?

On my desk at the office, I have a water bottle, lots of pens and pencils – even though I don’t write that much – and I have some art that my mom made. She’s a sculptor so I love having her pieces. I have some other gifts that I received from previous jobs: a framed photo of a Muni bus – I worked at SFMTA before BART – a model BART car, and a stress ball.

8. If you acquired a decommissioned legacy BART car, what would you transform it into?

If I had a bunch of them, I would make an escape room attraction where each BART car is a different task you have to complete.

9. Here’s your chance to brag. What’s something cool about BART you’d like to highlight?

One thing we’re always bragging about is how clean the electricity is that powers our system. In 2022, 100% of the electricity powering the core system came from greenhouse-gas free sources. BART is one of the best ways to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions associated with travel. We’re able to procure our own electricity, and that gives us the ability to negotiate our power purchase agreements to secure renewable and greenhouse gas-free energy.

10. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned at BART? 

You have to be patient. We work for a public agency and that means we have to get input from a lot of stakeholders before we make decisions, and that’s because we need to ensure we’re using our taxpayer funds appropriately. If you think something is going to take time, add a little more for a buffer and make sure you’re engaging with as many people as you can. It’s much easier to get buy in from different groups on things if they know what’s coming down the pipeline and feel included when decisions are made.

Live Author Talk with Margaret Wilkerson Sexton and Vanessa Hua

Wednesday, Nov. 1, noon to 1pm at BART Headquarters (2150 Webster Street, Oakland)

Register at this link. 

Members of the public and BART employees are invited to BART Headquarters in Oakland for a live author talk with Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of the fall 2023 book club selection, On the Rooftop, moderated by Vanessa Hua, author of the national bestseller Forbidden City: A Novel. The event is free. 

You must sign up to attend in-person. A limited number of seats are available.

Oakland's A Great Good Place for Books will be selling copies of Margaret Wilkerson Sexton's and Vanessa Hua's books. The authors will sign copies of their books after the talk. 

If you can't attend in person, the talk will be livestreamed on Zoom. Click this link at the start of the event to watch. No registration is required for the livestream. 

Click here for more information about One Book One BART. 

At SweaterFest '24 this past weekend, we invited attendees to write wintery poems all about BART, and nearly 100 poets stepped up to pen BART odes that would make the Bard proud (had he stuck around long enough to see the invention of mass rail transit). Reading through the works, we were struck by the profound professions of love for transit, which rivaled Shakespeare's finest romances. BARTy is to the Bay as Juliet is to Romeo. Some of the poems even brought tears to BART employees' eyes! 

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The rules were simple: Start each sentence with the specified letters and include mention of a few transit-y words.

We invite you to read some of our favorite poems in the slideshows. Click and hold on a poem to pause the slideshow.

Happy holidays to all and to all a safe ride!

Didn’t make it to SweaterFest? 

There’s still time to buy a sweater, scarf, and beanie (the sweater vests are sold out). Head to Railgoods.com to get your BART holiday swag!