Of elevation, excretion, and security on BART
BART rider Devin heard a voice. Here’s his story:
I passed through Embarcadero station on my way home a few months ago. Got to see the taillights of the train I’d wanted, so I had about ten minutes to kill, and started to do a slow lap of the platform. Part way down the station attendant got on the PA, somewhat brusquely asking “the person in the elevator” to “vacate the elevator immediately.” Somehow these same-station announcements are always jarring. They lack the lumbering, easily ignored and anyway largely inaudible cadence of the BART control center’s own mumbled platitudes. I was also surprised by the inference that anyone in the elevator cold hear the PA to begin with — but perhaps it’s there for just these sort of occasions. Whomever “the person in the elevator” was, they had evidently vacated it by the time I got past the platform elevator, leaving a fresh pair of wheelchair tire tracks in wet liquid.
You can probably see where this is going. After September 11th, BART’s contribution to our collective safety was to close all the toilets in underground stations — which is to say, all the toilets in downtown San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, etc. It’s a fine piece of security theater, an ineffective defense aimed at one particular avenue of imagined attack and serving mainly to annoy and inconvenience everyone else. Though BART denies it publicly, there was probably a budget-conservation motive also — those restrooms can’t have been easy to maintain.
In any event, with the toilets locked, some of their traffic duly shifted to the elevators. It’s a practical choice — BART’s hydraulic elevators are so slow as to provide ample time. You won’t get attacked, and you’ll have some degree of privacy. They’re also mostly ADA compliant, with grab rails and adequate room to maneuver. If you’re homeless and in a wheelchair, and the alternative is paying money you can’t afford for a street-level pay toilet (which presents its own issues), it makes a degree of sense from your point of view.
What makes less sense is keeping the toilets locked, given that doing so doesn’t provide any security and the cost savings is going into cleaning elevators. BART’s elevators were pretty bad even before this; now they’re significantly worse, extra janitorial attention or not. That in turn means that everyone who’s able to avoid them does so, leaving them even more available for alternate uses.
One person who wasn’t able to avoid them was the woman waiting up on the concourse level (along with the station’s janitor, mop and bucket in hand) for that same elevator. She was in a wheelchair too, and had presumably been obliged to get the station management to roust the offender out of there. Then she had to wait while the elevator was cleaned out enough for her own trip down, missing at least a couple of trains in both directions.
Security’s a tricky thing. It’s harder than it sounds. It’s especially hard when you don’t review your own choices to judge their effectiveness and side effects. Reopen the bathrooms, BART. This particular strategy was a bad idea in 2001 and it’s still a bad idea now.
What do you think? Should BART open its restrooms in underground stations?
strongly agree. bart needs to open its bathrooms in order to make bay area train service civilized again. if every other country and agency in the world can have toilets, so can — must — bart. dorothy dugger’s exit pay would probably have covered gold plating every toilet in the system, adding dual-flush toilets, artwork, better lighting and airflow and then some.
i was pleasantly surprised to find a working toilet at north berkeley bart yesterday. it’s at ground level so was miraculously open.
inside, the men’s loo was a bit dirty, with some lamer leaving feces covered TP piled NEXT TO the toilet (WTH?), and another clever man left an empty plastic bottle of OJ on top of the standing urinal.
but I didn’t care. the commode was open for business and i was a happy customer. 🙂
curious, will you cross post this to bartdiaries.com?
Indeed. Since they dont have bathrooms on the trains, they really should have them in the stations. The system was built that was for a reason.
PLEACES YOU WILL FIND A RESTROOM IN!
i always have a problem with this god damn policy.
i live in downtown berkeley and use that bart station.
North berkeley and
ashby bart both have useable bathrooms.
if you need to go to the bathroom and you are headed to SF on the millbrae/SFO train. get off at west oakland use the bathroom and run up to the platform, the daly city train comes 2 mins after the SFO/millbrae train does.
if your in SF and you need a bathroom, i suggest
1. FOREST HILL MUNI STATION HAS A BATHROOM!!
2. glen and balboa park bart stations have bathrooms
3. there is a bathroom at Caltrain, and at the safeway near caltrain(take N judah)
4. there is a bathroom at cafe flore you can get there by getting off at castro station
5. theres a bathroom at the safeway near church street station and the public bathroom at market street in front of the safeway
6. WEST FIELD MALL BATHROOM!
LAST RESORT! pee at oceanbeach when its dark at night i take the N.
thats my secret to finding a place to pee.
unfortunatly i have to pee every 5 mins so i hate bart because they have no bathrooms anywhere in the city!
someone pls kill the spammer
very clever, but still spam.
done. sorry about that.
I find the discussions around elevation, excretion, and security on BART fascinating. The balance between accessibility and safety is essential for a positive commuting experience. It’s protection dog for sale interesting to see how urban transit systems adapt to challenges, and I’m always curious about innovative solutions that can improve passenger comfort and security.