Can anything be done to stop the fare jumpers at the Bike Station in the Downtown Berkeley BART station?
http://sf.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06_11/Berkeley.Bike.Station.jpg
At least twice a week I see someone run down the stairs in front of the hideously cluttered and ugly bike station in the Downtown Berkeley BART station in order to avoid having to pay a fare to get on BART.
The attendants at the Bike Station have purposefully covered their windows with papers and maps so that they can turn a blind eye to this, and there is no attempt at enforcement whatsoever. The gates are all labeled "DO NOT EXIT - ALARM WILL SOUND" and so on, but I've seen people swing them on open and saunter up those steps time and time again.
The entire Berkeley Bike Station is a blight on an otherwise relatively nice BART station, and it encourages bike riders to lock their bikes to the station railing, which is yet another thing that is against the Station Rules that are never actually enforced.
The Downtown Berkeley Bike Station is a gaping hole in the fare system that more and more people are clearly learning about and abusing, and as a daily paid rider it makes me feel like a fool to pay my seven bucks a day while BART allows others to get the same service for free.
http://www.transitunlimited.org/images/thumb/d/d4/Berkeley_BART_3.JPG/300px-Berkeley_BART_3.JPG
This image shows the stairs I am talking about.
Something needs to be done. Either the Bike Station attendants need to be fined or somehow punished for allowing fare jumpers to pass, or the gates need to be better blocked to prevent people from entering and exiting the station using those stairs.
you still do not get it.
you still do not get it. please listen one time. if any employee for bart except, for police, tries to stop a fare evader and gets into a physical confrontation with them. only two things can happen. you either get hurt real bad. or you are disciplined for putting your hands on someone, even if you are defending yourself. this is not bull. there are many, many examples of this. it is not prudent for an employee to stop a fare evader and suffer the consequences, when you have a family to support at home. there needs to be a real effort by bart management to care about fare evaders and close the many, many physical holes in the system. and installing physical barriers. need for more cameras throughout the system, but more important is someone to monitor these cameras. other transit systems have had the same problems, make an effort to find out how they are handling it. believe me we are concerned about fare evaders, every time they cheat the system you and the employees are paying for it. perhaps you and other concerned riders could attend a bart board meeting and voice your concern. the only way there will be any change is for the public to voice their concerns in a public forum at the board meetings. after all these people are politicians trying to run a business. the majority of whom do not understand what it takes to make the system run. a good question to ask is when is the last time they rode a train or had a dialogue with a worker. after these are politicians who will bend like a tree in the wind in order to keep being elected and doing nothing to improve your your your way of life or thier workers.
Since there are still many
Since there are still many honest riders it is usually the few "bad apples" that ruin it for everyone. I believe there needs to be some redesign inside the station in order to make the paid areas ONLY accessible by paying. Doesn't NYC have true gates around their fare gates? Of course this would probably fall under a "capital improvement" and would require a great expenditure in order to rectify the problem. MacArthur and Richmond are two other stations that are notorious for fare evaders.
What can currently be done about fare evaders? Get a description, tell the agent. HOPEFULLY the agent would call BPD directly, but they could call Central. That train (or trains) get a formal hold at a station and BPD removes the fare evader. Of course that is the perfect world scenario and many more times than not the fare evaders will work the system and get away without paying.
EXACTLY MY POINT. Instead of
EXACTLY MY POINT.
Instead of just shrugging and saying "Oh well nothing we can do about it!" BART and its employees should be looking into ways to redesign the system to make fare evasion less easy.
I see lots of fare evasion at Civic Center, too.
People without tickets just stroll through the emergency exits, which are conveniently located far away from the station agent's booth, and which of course no longer have alarms connected to them.
I realize that some of this would cost a lot to fix, but it seems like in a lot of cases the way people are evading fares is by simply going through emergency exits that have had their alarms deactivated. If BART would simply reactivate those alarms I'm sure far fewer people would try to use them as free exits.
Two words: pigeon spikes!
Two words: pigeon spikes!
I'm not arguing your comments
I'm not arguing your comments about fare evaders at Civic Center, I see lots fare evasion there too, but keep in mind there are a LOT of government employees that use that stop, and a decent number of them probably legitimately ride free because they're law enforcement.
At places like Civic Center it actually wouldn't be that hard to install fare evasion controls:
1. Locking gates near the station agent booths with EMERGENCY switches INSIDE the booths for fire code compliance. Stick a prox card pad on there for employees and people with legit free rides.
2. Floor to ceiling bars around the fare areas
Both of these things would require all the booths to be staffed all the time, not just one guy on one end, when he happens to not be on break. That would be the difficult part for BART.
"2. Floor to ceiling bars
"2. Floor to ceiling bars around the fare areas
Both of these things would require all the booths to be staffed all the time, not just one guy on one end, when he happens to not be on break. That would be the difficult part for BART."
Yeah, like some of the other design "flaws" in the system, it makes one wonder why they did not install floor to ceiling bars in the original design. Then again, BART was not supposed to be like the NYC Subway.
I can see the suburban
I can see the suburban stations not needing tight controls, but it was overly optimistic to leave the city stations open too. Or at least change the design when it started to be a problem
There are always going to be
There are always going to be holes in the barrier system. It's pointless to try to plug them all -- at some point, it becomes a matter of putting up a $20,000 fence to stop $2,000 in fare evasion.
I think a well implemented proof of fare system, where you had to show your paid ticket to a fare inspector, would work better, and not incidentally make it easier for BART to open more areas to make it more convenient for people to enter and exit the system.
I do get it, G.O.B., but just
I do get it, G.O.B., but just because a Station Agent can't do anything doesn't mean that the Bike Station attendants (who I do not think are BART employees) should be allowed to not only use up a fare exit with their stupid bike bin, but also provide fare evaders with an easy and guaranteed way to get past the fare gates without anyone noticing.
But you are right to say that people should be more active in BART board meetings. How often are they held? Does anything actually come of them?
"Regular meetings of the
"Regular meetings of the Board of Directors and Standing Committees are held on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month - January through October, the third Thursday in November and the first and third Thursdays in December. Meetings generally start at 9:00 a.m...The BART Board Room is located in the Kaiser Center 20th Street Mall, Third Floor, 344 20th St., Oakland, CA" *
While fare evasion is costly to BART, what I cannot understand are the elevators. WHY? WHY? Why have an elevators (Lake Merritt as one example) exit the platform outside the station?
I would love to go to a BART
I would love to go to a BART meeting and voice my concern about fare evasion. But the Board seems to purposefully time their meetings so that those of us who actually pay our way every day (e.g. the Mon-Fri commuters) cannot make it. Would it be so hard to hold one meeting a month or one meeting every two months at 7pm? My City Council holds its meetings in the evenings because it WELCOMES public input and participation. The BART Board appears to shun it, and, therefore, the only people who are able to go to Board meetings are people who probably need the system to remain open to fare evasion, because they don't have JOBS.
If they took just $10 million out of that stupid Oakland Airport train, I imagine they could put fare gates outside elevators, alarms on emergency exit gates, and booby traps everywhere else.
I wouldn't really care much about next week's fare increase if I thought everyone was sharing in the pain. But I am fed up. I spent the entirety of July's commuter checks on AC Transit tickets. On one hand, I am hedging against a BART strike. On the other, after two days (Thursday and Friday) of not riding BART, and not seeing fare evaders, not seeing anyone clipping their nails, and not smelling hobo juice, I don't think I am ever going back to BART for regular commuting.
What kind magical fairyland
What kind magical fairyland are you in where you don't so those things on AC Transit?
Never seen any of that on my
Never seen any of that on my 5:57am Transbay bus. Just tired commuters sleeping, reading, and -- most importantly -- paying the $3.50 fare.
ok for the last time. the
ok for the last time. the only way to get any action on your complaints about anything to do with bart is to attend a board meeting and voice your concerns to them, please do so. these politicions on the board set policy that management must carry out. it will do you no good to whine and complain in this forum. get off your butt and become pro active in an area it will do some good. in other words shut the fuck up and do something besides sitting on your ass and whinng. if you can not do so just shut the fuck up until you know what you are talking about and get a life.
This from someone who has
This from someone who has also logged on to a forum called "BartRage" to complain about others' complaints?
Since there are no hard and
Since there are no hard and fast fixes to the problem of fare evasion, system wide, we all must work within the parameters that are established (agents not confronting a fare evader, elevators without gates, etc) and deter as many as we can. Personal experience, I got off at 12th Street and happen to walk up the escalator and had my radio with me and my id badge around my next. Two black teens in front of me decide to hop the fence at the top of the escalator. I raised my voice in question, "What are you doing? Get back in here!" Oddly enough...they listened and jumped back into the paid area. I pointed them out to the agent, after they tried to give me a lame excuse they were going to add fare to their ticket (LOL, come on am I a moron?). What the agent did, I do not know. I wish this problem were fixed ASAP, but I don't think there are any changes blowing in the wind so we are all stick with having to deal with fare evasion.
Dude, have you looked into
Dude, have you looked into anger management? Yoga, deep breathing exercises?
Getting pretty close to
Getting pretty close to personal attacks there, GOB. You best check yo'self before you wreck yo'self.
And hey pal, I work M-F, 9am-6pm.
When BART has their stupid-ass meetings at 9am on Thursdays, how do you suggest I attend them?
Do you really think I'm gonna take a vacation day so I can show up at a meeting to tell you people how to do your jobs?
And what you did -- basically
And what you did -- basically a verbal admonishion -- is all I really want out of station agents anyway. I don't expect a station agent to physically confront a fare evader and block their way. But at least calling after them and making sure they know they are being watched would deter some people, and would definitely make me feel like less of a shmuck for paying my fare.
So can someone please clarify the policy on "confronting" fare evaders? There is one woman, for instance, who used to work (maybe still does) at del Norte on weekend afternoons and she would definitely call out people, especially elevator evaders. It was effective a good portion of the time. It made me feel like she really cared about her job, which was nice. And the previous poster says he also verbally warned fare evaders. Are these employees breaking the rules, or is a "friendly reminder" to pay a fare allowed, particularly if the SA doesn't leave the booth? It would go a long way in terms of PR.
Yelling at someone isn't the
Yelling at someone isn't the same trying to physically stop them. 99% of the time a little verbal public humiliation is probably all it takes to get someone to go back and pay without incident or ignore you and leave without paying anyway, but it's that last 1% that make it so you couldn't pay me enough to do that job.
Yeah, which is why I suggest
Yeah, which is why I suggest erecting barriers in trouble spots.
Doesn't have to be the whole system, just the areas that are known problems.
For what it's worth, the
For what it's worth, the Berkeley bike facility is leaving the fare gate level and moving to an above-ground facility. This move will happen later this year.
I suggest that BART install
I suggest that BART install Handicap Accessible Fare gate at the exit of the elevators that open up to the outside of the stations. This will atleast deter some Free loading a'holes from taking the elevators and bolting out.
Agreed one billion percent. I
Agreed one billion percent.
I have absolutely no clue why they decided not to do this.
Emergency exits also need to be moved next to the Station Agent booth in all stations.
Simply being in that close of proximity to a BART employee would significantly reduce the number of people who would be willing to attempt fare evasion by just walking out the emergency exit.