From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: BART "State of the System" handout
Organization: LLNL
Distribution: ba
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 00:55:29 GMT


	At a BART station, I picked up their "State of the System"
handout, which boasted of several of the BART folx' achievements. It
has four color illustrations -- one of some construction, one of two
BART trains at opposite sides of a platform at MacArthur station, one
of a station with one of those new TV's, and one of a parking garage,
probably the Pleasant Hill one. Here, I will discuss some of these
achievements.

	Ridership is at an all-time high of about 73 million people
over the last fiscal year, who traveled about a billion miles (13
miles/trip on the average). Weekday ridership was 262000 people/day,
while weekend ridership was at a record high. A shortfall in sales-tax
subsidy and a leveling out of ridership was attributed to the
recession, however. They did manage to balance the budget without fare
hikes or layoffs or cuts in service, fortunately. Perhaps they did it
by cutting back on BART-board junkets :-)

	Reliability is also at a high, being at about 95% no later
than 5 minutes (official BART definition of being on time), as opposed
to <90% only 10 years ago.

	Not surprisingly, they boasted of their "timed transfers" for
nights and Sundays: San Francisco and Fremont trains would meet at
MacArthur, while Concord and Richmond trains would meet there and at
12th St. Oakland (the Fremont trains follow the San Francisco ones in
the 12th and 19th Sts. lower tunnel).

	The pamphlet pointed out the 2000 extra parking spaces in the
form of new garages, and pointed out the groundbreaking for 1900 more.
Yes, I know, these are "thrones for the auto", but does anyone have
any better ideas?

	The "MetroVision" system is their new TV channel, which plays
on TV sets in the downtown Oakland and SF stations. It shows news
headlines and various ads, as well as BART info and which train is at
the platform. Although it is not interactive, it is certainly an
improvement over the terminals they had had back in 1988, which were a
nice idea, but which had those horrible membrane keypads and which
were abysmally slow. Seems like they had gone shopping in some
clearance sale of early personal computers or something.

	The extensions so far are reportedly under budget and months
ahead of schedule; one thing that helps is that the construction
companies are starved for work in this recession.

	Under development is a "revolutionary new" "suspended
guideway" people-mover to the Oakland Airport, apparently featuring
cars hanging beneath a steel rail. Is this what the monorail of
Wuppertal, Germany is/was like?

	BART has also established a R&D department for working on such
things as train control, efficient energy use, and passenger telephone
trip planning. I'm not sure how the latter will work. Perhaps the
operators will have some workstation handy which will work out the bus
and rail routes that connect two spots. It might even be nice to have
such workstations at BART stations and other heavily visited spots
(examples: major CalTrain stations and transit malls like those in San
Jose and San Rafael). One would click on (in Macintosh fashion) the
source and destination spots, and the computer would work out possible
transit routes and list them. One can then click on one and work out
the arrival time in terms of the departure time, and vice versa. The
maps would come in several scales, the largest-scale map being of the
whole Bay Area. Clicking on a region would make the system put up a
magnified map, down to street-level maps.

	And about BART and electric cars, it seems that BART's main
involvement will be in _developing_ small electric cars, as part of
the "National Station Car Consortium" and the CALSTART consortium.
These will be suitable for local trips and for going to park-and-ride
lots ... like BART's. The BART folx will be working with PG&E to
develop fast charging systems for electric cars (well, the PG&E guys
get to sell more electricity...).

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