Why BART Needs an Overhaul
how basic marketing could fix the Bay Area’s mass transit systems
Posted Jan 12, 04:00 am in environment, experiences, improvements, marketing, pictures, transportation
Last week, I was back in the Bay Area for a day after a trip to Asia. An excursion from the airport on BART reminded me what an egregious marketing disaster the system is for residents of Northern California. It’s a classic example of a well-meaning institution that does not take stock of how it does things, how its methods affect customers, and how that affects their overall revenues and performance. To understand why this is important, we first have to understand the current context of BART and the role it serves in the Bay Area.
BART was developed in the 1960s as a means of getting residents of outlying suburbs in the Bay Area to the city centers of Oakland and San Francisco. It was fashioned as an inter city (between cities) transport system, not an intra city (within a single city) transport system like New York, Tokyo, or Hong Kong. Therefore, the station distribution of the BART system is wider, but with lower density. That means that while BART travels further than most other subway systems across the world, it’s also harder to get to a station, your trip is significantly more likely to involve several legs involving different types of transport, and you have to wait longer between the arrival of two trains. These facts already pose a psychological barrier to potential ridership, so it is important that if administrators want to encourage BART usage, that annoyances be minimized; after all, any excuse a rider can find not to take BART, they likely will employ.
It is for that reason that it is tragic that BART is from top to bottom such a frustrating transit system, and seems to me the perfect example of a wasted opportunity— so much so that it is really an embarrassment for an area of the country that prides itself on technological leadership and progressive thought. At every turn, the BART system seems to want to discourage ridership, and make it ridiculously hard for passengers to do things that should be very simple. Here are some observations about BART that I’ve made, culled from years of experience riding it.
- Marketing Problem #1 – Station Layout and Orientation
Almost all BART stations have unique designs that share few attributes between them besides being uniformly confusing and utterly confounding for people who are unfamiliar with their layouts. I realize that the BART system was largely designed in the 1960s, but a public transit system is not the place to experiment with post-modern design. Some BART stations are so poorly designed that they seem to actively thwart passengers from catching trains. For example, in the 12th street / Oakland City Center station, for a passenger to switch trains, he must climb up one set of stairs to another level, and then climb down a different set of stairs to access the second BART platform. This is despite the fact that the first set of stairs that you climb up actually passes right by the level you are trying to get to; for some reason, access to that floor from the first set of stairs is blocked. In certain other stations, the passenger waiting platforms are placed not in the center between the two train tracks, but on the opposite sides of the train; this means that instead of allowing passengers to access either train from one platform, you have to decide which platform you want to go to before you walk onto it. If you select the wrong one the first time, you have to run back up the flight of stairs you took to get to the one you went to, and run down another flight of stairs to get to the other (New York’s subway system has this same problem— except that there, if you go in the wrong side, you actually have to pay the subway toll again to switch platforms!). This is not problematic for people familiar with the stations, but for visitors and for people new to the area, this can be maddening.
Solution for Problem #1
Short of total redesign, this is a tough one. Better signage would help a lot. It’s impossible to know where to go when all the signs just say things like ‘Platform 1’ and ‘North-bound train.’ This presupposes the customer already has previous understanding of the station layout and geographical sense of the Bay Area. Spell out everything, so people who have no idea know what they’re supposed to do.
- Marketing Problem #2 – Inflexible Payment System
The BART card, which gives a passenger access to the trains, is made of a flimsy piece of magnetic paper that inspires exactly zero confidence. They are easily bent, and will de-magnetize if you happen to place one next to your mobile phone. Bent or de-magnetized tickets are rejected by the turnstiles, and the BART attendants aren’t particularly concerned about helping passengers with problem cards (my girlfriend told an uninterested attendant that her card, which still had $5 on it, wasn’t working. The attendant took it, said that it was “too old” and then told my girlfriend to buy a new one. One wonders, is 1.5 years really a long time in BART years?). If you’re lucky, you can write to some address listed in BART informational literature and get a refund on the money you put on the card, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
Solution to Marketing Problem #2
Many other subway systems have much sturdier cards that aren’t so easy to mangle or otherwise damage, like Hong Kong’s system, which has something resembling a credit card. And you can use them to buy all kinds of other stuff too (like food at convenient stores), which make you more likely to keep one around and using them and the BART system too.
- Marketing Problem #3 – Abhorrent Aesthetics
Visually, the BART trains themselves are hardly the stuff of envy for other countries looking to the US for mass transport leadership. I often wonder how wide-eyed visitors to Silicon Valley with dreams of a sunny land filled with the world’s most cutting edge companies must react when they first enter a dingy retro-future steel train with dirty carpeted floors and filthy green upholstered seats. It must have a way of shattering the grandiose illusions about the Californian dream. In what world is it a good idea to make a public mass transit system with seats and floors that can’t be wiped clean with a high pressure hose? With the level of traffic that passes through the BART system every day, why would a designer choose to use materials like carpet and upholstery that retain dirt and which are near impossible to keep clean? For professionals traveling on BART, there’s definitely a sense that you’re ‘slumming’ when you enter a weirdly foul-smelling and visually unappealing environment like a BART train.
Solution to Marketing Problem #3:
My advice is to ditch the upholstery and carpeted floor in favor of the hard plastic used by nearly every other transit system. It’s much cheaper to maintain, it smells a lot better after constant use, it doesn’t get as dirty, and it looks a hell of a lot better than dirty green. Shallow as it may be, initial visual impression is one of the strongest drivers of attitudes towards things. Impress people visually about BART and they’re more likely to ride it.
- Marketing Problem #4 – Seat Arrangement
The arrangement of the seats in BART is at best curious. Space is used inefficiently and arbitrarily; some seats face forwards and others face backwards; some seats are placed perpendicular to the train, while others are parallel; and some seats face other seats so you can stare awkwardly at strangers). You’d think there was some rationale for this arrangement, like perhaps flexibility for special situations; but it’s clear that the arrangement doesn’t even afford this. For example, if you are returning from SFO, San Francisco’s international airport, and you have bags, you can forget about having a place to put your bags without using up seats or blocking access to doors. If you have a bike, there is absolutely no place for it on a BART train where it won’t create serious chaos in how people can sit, or how others can walk around or access the BART car. Here, we have a situation in which the arrangement is neither most convenient for passengers, nor accommodating for special situations; instead, it serves mostly to taunt you and make the whole system seem poorly planned.
Solution to Marketing Problem #4:
I suggest the rearrangement of seats to maximize seating capacity in most cars, but to set aside [a] special car[s] with a different seating arrangement that better accommodates people with packages, baggage, and bicycles.
- Marketing Problem #5 – Biking on BART
Speaking of bikes, BART does allow you to bring a bike on— but not at the times that you’d most likely want to bring your bike on, which is during normal commuting hours. If you want to use your bike as part of your commute to work, don’t even think about it. Not only are they are prohibited during those times, you’ll have to hold it awkwardly while it blocks doors and access to seats— which is why they forbid them in the first place. Bring one on during peak hours, and the train driver will tell you to get off the train.
Solution to Marketing Problem #5: As I mentioned previously, I would suggest adding a special bike car to encourage bikers to use BART and to further encourage use of mass transit— though the BART system has been systematically reducing the number of BART cars in operation in order to cut costs. Ironically, these efforts in cost-cutting also discourage ridership, which along with reducing costs, reduces revenues. To give BART some credit, they have been adding bicycle parking units outside some BART stations, like El Cerrito, where you can store your bike at the station in a special holding container for 3 cents an hour. But this still doesn’t solve the problem of those who need bikes on both ends of their daily commute.
- Marketing Problem #6 – Maps and Signage
The BART system lacks an adequate number of maps, and also offers poor information quality on existing maps. There should be BART maps everywhere, but it’s often hard to find one. There’s usually only one on an entire BART train, when there should be at least 4 in my opinion. Furthermore, if you don’t understand the geography of the area or are unfamiliar with subway maps, you’ll have a heck of a time figuring out how to get from point A to point B. It’s not at all intuitive which train you should be getting on if you want to get from, say, Daly City to Union City, particularly if you don’t understand where those places are in the Bay Area. Not all trains go to all places, so it’s important to understand which ones go where, but it’s especially infuriating to newcomers to understand the idea of transfer points and switching trains, as making sense of the train maps when you don’t have a sense for the geography takes too much effort.
Solution to Marketing Problem #6: I would propose that instead of showing a geographical depiction of cities, BART’s map should be shown as a linear continuum to eliminate unnecessary or confusing information. Perhaps something like this, where flashing lights can indicate where you are (indicated in the diagram by the yellow light in circle 13) and the next station the train will stop at (indicated by the flashing orange light in circle 14):
- Marketing Problem #7 – Communication between System and Passengers
It also doesn’t help that conductors don’t always give helpful messages over the intercoms about where passengers should transfer and whether the train is currently at a transfer point. In fact, it’s often impossible to understand what is being said on the intercom. And too often it’s hard to figure out what station you’re at! If you’re lucky, there’s a tiny sign that you might see posted in the station if you look out your dirty window long enough to find it, but it’s not always there and it’s often surprisingly difficult to spot.
Solution to Problem #7: Tokyo’s subway system has an interactive map on every wall of the train car showing exactly where you are at any given time, what station you are about to arrive at, and most basically, what direction you’re traveling. That would be a great and welcome addition to BART.
- Marketing Problem #8 – Intermodality Issues
BART’s apparent slogan is “BART… and you’re there!”, a phrase that sounds great on paper. Yet, anyone who’s ever ridden BART knows well that BART is anything but that simple. With its few stations positioned in San Francisco and Oakland, as well as places like Fruitvale and Bay Point, you can make a decent argument that BART’s geographical reaches are significant; still, what it means in that slogan to ‘be there’ is clearly up to debate. Sure, you can get from the town of Orinda to the city San Francisco relatively easily if you happen to already be at the originating BART station, but it’s rarely convenient to get either to your originating BART station or from the destination BART station to wherever it is that you’re trying to go. This often means that a range of transport is necessitated for a given trip. You might need to drive or walk to a BART station, take the BART, and hop on a bus to your final destination. Or you might need to get on CalTrain, catch the BART, and hail a taxi for the last leg of the trip. “BART… and you’re there!” is a phrase that not only rings untrue and hollow for the bulk of passengers, but serves mostly as a reminder for how long and tedious it is to get anywhere using BART and Bay Area mass transit in general (which probably explains in large part the ridiculous amount of traffic to be found on any given stretch of highway in the Bay Area during any given time, particularly around commute times).
Solution to Marketing Problem #8: Unfortunately, short of overhauling the entire mass transit system of the Bay Area, there’s little that can be done about this now, but it should be seen as a cautionary example for other up-and-coming systems.
- Marketing Problem #9 – Too Hard to Pay for Tickets
Yet, I have repeatedly mentioned on this blog, any organization that is attempting to increase its patronage needs to make it easy for people to switch to them. The mass transit in the Bay Area does an absolutely abysmal job of this. Infrequent trains and buses as well as limited routes are a big part of the problem, but are for understandable budgetary reasons not easy to fix. But one thing that Bay Area mass transit absolutely should do ASAP is to make it easier to pay for tickets and get on board mass transit.
Solution to Problem #9: One way they could facilitate this is to add RFID systems like Hong Kong’s subway system has, where you can have your funds deducted simply by flicking your card— or now, specially-enabled wristwatch— at a receiver. That’s a technological improvement, and while worthwhile, will only do so much.
- Marketing Problem #10 – Integrated Payment System
But more importantly than the previous note is the main thing that should be adequately addressed: the (potentially) intermodal nature of most mass transit trips taken by Bay Area commuters. There’s BART, CalTrain, MUNI, AC Transit, WestCAT, SamTrans, Golden Gate Transit, and the Oakland Ferry (among the countless other mass transit operators), and they all have different payment forms. Can you imagine what a pain it is to manage multiple transit passes? In the past I’ve had commutes involving AC Transit, BART, and MUNI in a single day. No one wants to fumble around with all these transit cards, constantly monitoring whether they have credit on those cards or not. People want one card. Why should transit be such a big hassle? It’s already a huge time sink.
Solution to Problem #10: Transit operators should be making every effort to sync with other transit operators. This sort of system standardization will not only result in cost savings for the overall system, but will also result in increased system throughput, which is, presumably the goal of all this. Mass transit operators are supposed to be trying to alleviate traffic congestion and reducing pollution, so why should they drag their feet about implementing a universal payment system? I do realize that they are all different agencies, and that there are logistical issues involving funding that likely form the root of the problem here, but they are worth overcoming not just for the good of the public, but also for the environment.