I am really grateful for BART. BART, as anyone from the Bay Area knows stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit. It’s our train. There are other trains that connect with BART and form an area network, most notably Caltrain and the MUNI Metro, but BART is the backbone of the Bay Area. It is definitely not perfect. Sometimes the trains are pretty dirty. Sometimes weird crap happens. But by and large, it’s a really efficient and effective way of getting around (as long as you want to go to places that are near BART). I used to live in NYC with its vaunted Subway system and I can tell you I prefer BART (though a better comparison is to the LIRR). I live right on top of a BART stop, the 19th St. Oakland stop, but oftentimes I bike over to the West Oakland stop, which is in a pretty rough part of town but has the advantage of being a choke point to go under the Bay, and thus has every train stop at it. I’ve ridden BART hundreds, maybe thousands of times, and with very rare exceptions, it gets me where I want to go, without a lot of fuss. There’s places to put your bikes, it’s not usually too crazy busy unless it’s rush hour, and it’s kinda expensive but honestly less expensive than any other way of getting around. The Clipper card system works, the seats are okayishly comfy; it’s pretty much the essence of a working man’s commuter train system. As a bonus, it’s a great way to go on a bike ride; just target a stop of the train for the end of the ride and you can get home easily.
A lot of folks complain about BART, but I think that either they are stuck commuting on it during rush hour (which definitely can suck) or they just haven’t used other systems and don’t know how good they have it.
(P.S. Yes, I know that Europe has awesome trains that are way better. This is true. But BART is the best I’ve used in the US).
