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Sandra Escalante pictured above at El Cerrito Plaza Station. 

Happy International Women’s Day! BART is celebrating Women’s History Month by sharing stories about the incredible women who work with and have impacted our agency. Stay tuned for additional content. 

In the construction world, small business owner Sandra Escalante said she is often referred to as a “unicorn.”  

“I’m a woman, a minority, and a member of the LGBT community,” she said recently. “It’s very difficult just to be an employee in the construction world. A business owner? Ha.”  

Escalante owns Laner Electric Supply Company, a wholesale distributor of electrical and lighting tools and supplies headquartered in a 16,000-square-foot warehouse in Richmond, Calif. The company is one of 670 small businesses supported by BART’s Small Business Support Services (SBSS), a program operated by BART’s Office of Civil Rights. SBSS provides a variety of free services to small businesses owned by women, minorities, disabled veterans, and members of the LGBT community, that are looking to bid on BART construction contracts or require technical assistance on active BART construction contracts.  

Escalante happens to meet every single one of the criteria for participation in SBSS. In addition to working with the program, she also served for multiple years on BART’s Business Advisory Council.  

In her interview with BART, Escalante confessed that owning a small business “is not easy,” and all the more so if you’re a woman or minority.  

"Programs like SBSS are the beginning of changing mindsets,” she said. “If you don’t change mindsets, nothing will change materially." 

Escalante’s path to entrepreneurship has been long, winding, and full of challenges. After leaving an engineering program in the Philippines when she was young, Escalante joined the military. When they found out she was gay, they kicked her out. Escalante then went on to work for the U.S. Postal Service, walking up and down the hills of San Francisco “with a mail bag that was bigger than me.” In time, she landed at a construction management firm as a mail clerk working for $10 an hour. Little by little, she climbed up the industry ladder.  

Throughout her career, Escalante said she’s “had to break a lot of glass ceilings." She can share numerous anecdotes of people in the room discriminating against her. When she was helming major companies, she was sometimes mistaken for the secretary, she said. Once, an administrator refused to order her business cards because “only men get them, not women." 

Everything she’s experienced in her many decades of experience has only fueled her internal fire. It’s also compelled her to “pay it forward.” In addition to serving on a number of business advisory councils, including BuildOUT California, an LGBT industry association, Escalante is a hands-on mentor for up-and-coming entrepreneurs, many of whom are treading a path trod by Sandra herself.

 It's a lot of time and effort, but she believes sharing her knowledge and experience is important. 

“If there are people out there that are not just looking out for themselves, the good comes back to them,” Escalante said of her mentoring efforts. “It’s karma. Don’t do things for yourself, and the rest will fall into place.” 

Before she took over Laner Electric, Escalante held a series of executive positions in the construction industry. Though she has decades of experience under her belt, Escalante said she’s never stopped learning, especially in her current role as the CEO and president of a small business.  

She said BART’s SBSS program, especially its pre-award administrator, Paul Pendergast, has supported her in a variety of ways, including editing capability statements (promotional/marketing documents that advertise a company and its services); advising on ways to secure funding; helping her craft requests for proposals (documents that announce and describe a project to solicit bids); and offering technical support. Pendergast even hired Escalante a coach to help her conquer her stage fright ahead of speaking engagements.  

Pendergast said he hasn’t “met many entrepreneurs who have donated as much time as Escalante to advocating for all small businesses.” 

“With Sandra, it is always about lifting ‘all boats’ equally,” he said.  

Escalante knows well the challenges of owning and operating a business as a woman and a minority. But she’s never given up, even after she experienced a debilitating stroke and heart attack in 2006 that continues to have lasting effects on her.  

Her responsibility to her employees keeps her going despite the setbacks, she said, and she’s learned to ask for help when she needs it, including by reaching out to services like SBSS.  

"[SBSS] is actually making a difference,” she said in closing. “I hope BART continues to expand it and keeps taking chances on small businesses.” 

Starting September 11, 2023, BART will roll out a reimagined service plan that is responsive to post-pandemic commute patterns and ridership growth opportunities. This new schedule is designed to work for everyone, every day.  
Listen to our podcast to take a deep dive into the changes being made. 
And watch our explainer video. 

Highlights of the new schedule:

• Eliminates 30-minute wait times on nights and weekends. 
• No BART rider will wait more than 20 minutes for a scheduled train no matter what hour of the day or day of the week.
• 50% increase in evening service seven days a week.
• Service on BART’s busiest weekday line, the Yellow Line, increases from trains every 15 minutes to every 10 minutes from Pittsburg/Bay Point.
• Reduced wait times thanks to new scheduled transfers. 
• New schedule improves reliability and better serves SFO and OAK. All Red Line trains will stop at SFO before Millbrae, streamlining service for airport riders. 
• Only new Fleet of the Future trains will run for the base schedule
• Trains will run shorter to enhance safety and cleanliness and to increase police presence

Examples of what the new service means for riders:

• People that live near Pittsburg, Concord, Walnut Creek, Lafayette, and other areas along parts of Highways 4, 680, and 24, will have 10-minute BART service to San Francisco, Berkeley, and Richmond (a timed transfer is required for Berkeley and Richmond) until 9pm.
• People that live near Milpitas, Fremont, Union City, and other areas near Highway 880, will have 10-minute BART service to San Francisco until 9pm (a timed transfer may be required).
• There will now be nine trains per hour (instead of eight) to/from SFO until 9:00pm and three trains per hour until midnight (instead of two).
• On weekends, until 9pm, the Richmond Line will have trains every 10 minutes that will get you to San Francisco (a timed transfer may be required).
• On weekends, until 9pm, the Berryessa Line will have trains every 10 minutes that will get you to San Francisco (a timed transfer may be required).

View our new Safe & Clean Plan.

Train Schedule Timetable PDFs available

View the PDF timetables. 

The schedule change is cost-neutral and relies less on flattened levels of work commute trips and more on ridership growth opportunities.
 
To make this significant investment in service on nights and weekends, some weekday service will be slightly scaled back based on ridership trends and areas of the system where riders are served by multiple lines with the option to transfer. BART’s Blue Line to and from Dublin will have 20-minute frequencies at all hours, marking an increase on nights and weekends, but an added 5 minutes between trains during weekday daytime hours. BART’s Blue (Dublin-Daly City) and Orange (Richmond-Berryessa) lines serve the fewest riders in the system on weekdays. 

Riders coming from the Richmond and Berryessa/North San Jose direction will now have a train about every 10 minutes on weekdays during daytime hours instead of a train every 7.5 minutes. BART will increase communication on these lines about the option to take an Orange Line (Richmond-Berryessa) train and transfer if necessary to complete their trip. To make 10-minute service possible for Green and Orange line riders to the city, we had to move the Blue Line to better align with the Green Line, removing the Dublin to Richmond transfer opportunity at Bay Fair. It will now be a 17-minute wait at Bay Fair if you want to make that transfer. But we adjusted the Blue Line so instead of waiting 17 minutes at Bay Fair, Blue Line riders can now transfer to the Red Line/Richmond train at West Oakland, giving the rider a 15-minute advantage (requires changing platforms).

BART to Antioch service will now be every 20 minutes instead of every 15 minutes on weekdays so that every other BART train lines up for a timed transfer with an Antioch DMU train at the transfer platform. BART doesn't own enough DMU train cars to match the new 10 minute frequencies of the Yellow line. The BART train that doesn't line up with the Antioch DMU train, will turn around at Pittsburg/Bay Point. Antioch riders will benefit from more frequent service on nights and weekends (from 30 minutes to 20 minutes).

SFO and OAK Airports will be Better Served 

The new schedule improves service to and from San Francisco International and Oakland International airports. During the daytime, 9 trains per hour will serve SFO instead of 8, and on nights and weekends, trains will arrive and depart every 20 minutes instead of every 30 minutes.

All Red Line trains will now stop at SFO before heading to Millbrae, this will streamline the customer experience to and from the airport. Currently the Red Line passes through Millbrae before heading to the airport. This change allows us to increase service to SFO, is responsive to current travel patterns, and eliminates confusion at Millbrae for airport riders. For Millbrae riders, this move adds a few minutes to the trip. 

There will also be more trains on nights and weekends to OAK.

Improved Reliability

This new service plan will also improve on-time performance and improve reliability during the peak commute because there will be less train traffic and congestion through the core of our system. Trains won’t stack up as frequently as they will be better spaced apart, allowing us to recover from delays faster.
BART will still maintain a clock-face schedule seven days a week offering a consistent timetable for easy planning no matter what day of the week, but now it will be with 20-minute common headways.

Changes in Frequencies

The maps below display the changes to the number of trains per hour for each line for weekday daytime 5-line service, weekend 5-line service, and evening 3-line service.

(Weekday daytime 5-line service)

(Weekend daytime 5-line service)

(Evening 3-line service)

*This article was originally published on April 27, 2023.

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Click on the image to watch an explainer video on the upcoming BART schedule change on September 11th.