Video: Drama over the BART Intercom

Photo by Kevin Wong/Right Angle Images

BART operator Kelly Beardsley lets us in on one little secret about driving BART: passengers love pressing the intercom button to complain about annoyances big and small, or even to just chat with him for no reason at all. At the last Muni Diaries Live show, Kelly recounts the shenanigans over the intercom on one eventful BART ride.

I love intercom calls, they always crack me up. You know on BART at the end there’s that little box that says, In Case of Emergency, Call the Operator?” Sometimes people just push it and just chatting me up. Like, “Hey, I noticed you just made another transfer announcement at Lake Merritt Station. I don’t usually hear transfer announcements at Lake Merritt Station for the Dublin-Pleasanton bound passengers. Are you going to make a transfer announcement at Bay Fair?” And i’m just like, “Oh I like to mix it up! I like to make sure people get to where they need to go!” And the guy’s like, “Oh that’s really cool, man, so what other places do you make transfer announcements?”

We get stupid calls, we get fun calls, and we get complaint calls like, “Hey! Hey! There’s this girl and she’s got a bike and she’s eating a burrito and she’s in the handicapped seat!”

On one mellow Sunday, Kelly gets an intercom call at Fruitvale station about two guys screaming at each other “about to fuck each other up!” He calls it into Central, but the intercom caller wasn’t finished.

“I’m looking out the window and I see that no one’s fighting and thought, maybe they worked it out! So I get going and a minute outside of Fruitvale and I get another call. It’s the same guy but now with other people too. “Hey man! You better get someone!” I hear screaming in the background and I’m like, “Has it escalated?” And the guy goes, “This motherfucker’s got a bike! He’s got a bike raised over his head!”

Watch the rest of the video to hear what happened!