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2023 has been a big year for BART as we laid the critical groundwork toward a new vision and a better future. It’s a future that features a cleaner, safer, easier-to-use BART that prioritizes all riders - and it’s right around the corner. 

Here are 23 things BART is proud of this year. 

We understood travel patterns were changing…so we changed with them. 

1. BART listened to riders clamoring for more comprehensive service outside 9-to-5 work hours. We increased service during nights and weekends, where ridership is growing fastest. From weekend sporting events to evening concerts, BART is dedicated to being the safest, fastest, most reliable way to get where you need to go for fun.  

We made historic updates to modernize our system.  

2. We are now running exclusively new trains as part of the base schedule.  
3. We migrated to 100% digital payments, eliminating paper ticket waste, and paving the way for our new state-of-the-art fare gates that will bolster ridership, revenue, and rider safety in 2024. 
4. We rolled out the first gates to the public at West Oakland Station this week, ending the year with yet another upgrade to BART’s public safety infrastructure. Watch the time lapse video.

We doubled down on safety and cleaning. 

5. We released our Safe & Clean Plan to show the progress we have made in making our system cleaner, safer, and more reliable.  
6. Customer on-time performance is at 92%. 
7. We doubled the police presence in the system, and we won awards for using unarmed Ambassadors and Crisis Intervention Specialists to increase staff presence in our system and help people in need. 
8. We discontinued the disruptive fare inspections during the morning commute at Embarcadero Station and re-deployed the fare inspectors to ride trains and inspect Clipper cards at more stations. 
9. We started running shorter trains to enhance safety because data shows without a doubt that active spaces are safer spaces. 
10. We launched our “Let’s Talk About Us” campaign about domestic violence and Phase II of our Not One More Girl initiative addressing sexual harassment. We believe using art to change a culture of violence and building community partnerships to make BART safer is important. 
11. We doubled the rate of deep cleaning train cars, and we increased the pressure washing of stations.  

We made stations more welcoming. 

12. We made it easier to pay for parking with the new Tap-and-Go feature on the Official BART Mobile App that allows customers to pay for parking with just one tap. 
13. We reopened newly remodeled all-gender restrooms at Embarcadero and Downtown Berkeley stations. We now have six open underground restrooms. 345,000 people used these attended, clean, and safe restrooms in 2023. 
14. We deployed a comprehensive strategy to clean up Civic Center, resulting in a dramatically improved station experience from previous years.   
15. We now have ten brand-new escalators in downtown San Francisco and six new canopies along Market Street. 
16. We’re increasing the discount for low-income riders from 20% to 50% with the Clipper START program beginning January 1, 2024.  

We advanced our efforts to build housing on our property. 

17. BART was proud to celebrate the openings of three transit-oriented development projects - Gateway at Millbrae Station, Waymark at Walnut Creek, and Kapuso Upper Yard at Balboa Park, creating over 1,100 new homes, including over 200 new affordable homes.  
18. We advanced two additional projects by signing lease options with our selected developers at West Oakland and Phase I at Lake Merritt. These will bring nearly 1,200 new homes, including more than 400 affordable homes for riders who need them most. 

We focused on responsible long-term planning to secure a thriving BART today and long into the future. 

19. We delivered a balanced budget during the most difficult financial time in the history of American public transit. The Grants team secured nearly $400 million of funds in 2023 to help pay for improvements and reinvestment within the BART system. 
20. We welcomed our new Inspector General and nearly tripled the office’s budget so it can expand and perform even more audits and investigations to identify waste, fraud, and abuse and ensure we are maximizing our efficiency.  
21. And most impactful of all, we successfully advocated to get financial assistance from the state budget that immediately averted an impending fiscal cliff. BART stands to receive 45% of the region’s allocation and we will continue to build the case for long overdue investment.   

We got to know our riders and celebrated transit with our biggest fans. 

22. From our book club to new anime mascots, we activated our stations and trains with fun events to welcome people back to BART.  

We also haven’t lost sight of the future. 

23. The Link21 program was awarded $11.3 million in project development funds from the state, reaffirming the critical role of our efforts to build a second train crossing between Oakland and San Francisco in helping the State achieve their State Rail Plan vision for Northern California. Link21 launched its first 18-member, community-based Equity Advisory Council to advise program on priority population concerns, including anti-displacement, connectivity, access, and service needs.  

BART remains the best and the safest way to travel the Bay Area.  

We are proud of what we accomplished in 2023 - from investments in public safety, modernizing our trains and schedules, improving infrastructure, increasing equity, and working toward a secure fiscal future. But we know there’s always more to be done. We can’t wait to show riders what’s in store in 2024 and beyond as we continue driving our vision for the future of Bay Area public transit. 

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.    

Katelyn Breaty and her family immigrated from the Philippines ten years ago. She got her first glimpse of the place she’d call home from the windows of a Richmond-bound BART train.  

Breaty was seven at that time and hadn’t yet learned to speak English. Through her young eyes, the terminal at San Francisco International Airport was a mess of chaos and kinetic energy.  

“I had no idea what was going on. I just hopped on BART,” she said. “I’d never experienced anything like it.”  

Though Breaty had ridden trains before, she’d never been on a system like BART before. She said, “Everything about the system mesmerized me since day one.” The speed of the trains – and the ease with which they stopped at each station – was especially memorable. From there on out, she took BART to learn the lay of the land.  

Since their arrival in the U.S., Breaty’s family has lived in Martinez, Vallejo, Daly City, San Francisco, Hayward...the list goes on. Every time they moved, BART was a lifeline for Breaty, keeping her connected to the friends she left behind.  

“BART was the driving force that helped me escape the suburbs, that made me feel free,” she said. “Having grown up poor, BART has been a getaway from my life that enables me to go somewhere fun, exciting, fulfilling." 

Before immigrating to the U.S., Breaty lived in urban centers, including Manila in the Philippines and Bremen, Germany. She said moving to the suburbs was “crushing and dehumanizing,” and learned quickly that in America, "cars are prioritized over people." Taking BART to San Francisco or Berkeley or Oakland was an escape from all that.  

Once, when she was ten years old, she snuck out of the house and took BART to meet friends in San Francisco. She’d never taken the train by herself before, but she figured it out. Her parents were understandably upset when she returned home, but also “glad and amused I was able to navigate the system myself.” From then on, they started giving her more freedom to go out on her own because “they knew I’d find my way home,” she said.  

Today, Breaty relies on BART to get to class at the City College of San Francisco, where she’s working toward a degree in computer science. On her BART ride to CCSF, she works on assignments for class and projects for her web development consulting business. She even makes time on the train to work on a complete model of the BART system she’s building in Roblox, a virtual game platform and creation system.  

Now that she’s sixteen, Breaty has her driver's license. But, she said, "I take BART over everything.” 

“I would rather sit and look out the window of a train than be behind the wheel looking at standstill traffic,” she said.  

Recently, she and her parents were going shopping in Walnut Creek. Her mom didn’t want to take the train, so Breaty made a bet that she and her dad would beat her to Walnut Creek on BART. 

“She was still looking for parking when we started eating,” she said. “Even with a bus bridge that weekend, we got home before her, too.”  

Breaty said the friendly bet persuaded her mom to start riding BART for non-work-related trips.  

She said, “BART has made me an advocate for public transportation and urbanism." When the new service schedule came out this past September, which increased weeknight and weekend service, she told everyone she knows: If you’re not already taking BART for leisure, you should start now.  

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.