SAN FRANCISCO -- 
 
 Authorities repeatedly closed two San Francisco BART stations during the Monday evening commute, arresting 45 people in connection with an anti-BART protest that roamed both aboveground along Market Street and inside the transit system. 
 
 Commuters were frustrated and confused, as BART officials closed and reopened the Powell Street station four times and the Civic Center station three times - sometimes within minutes - fearing that roaming protesters would disrupt transit service. The shifting protest also snarled traffic along Market Street. 
 
 Earlier in the evening, BART police arrested five people in connection with a protest at the Civic Center platform. San Francisco police arrested five others for failing to disperse from a street protest near Seventh and Market streets. 
 
 Shortly before 9 p.m., San Francisco police began arresting 35 people in connection with the demonstration near the San Francisco Main Library near Hyde and Grove Streets. Most were cited for failing to disperse or illegally blocking traffic. Police spokesman Albie Esparza said no vandalism was reported in connection with the demonstration, but police did confiscate a hammer from one demonstrator. 
 
 Monday's rush-hour protest was the latest in a series of online and street demonstrations against the transit agency since a BART police officer fatally shot 45-year-old Charles Blair Hill, a transient, at the Civic Center Station on July 3, allegedly as Hill wound up to throw a knife. 
 
 Protesters and civil libertarians were also concerned about BART shutting down cellular communications, which it did during a demonstration on August 11, sparking another protest last week. 
 
 Caught in the middle: BART's passengers, who take an average 350,000 trips each weekday. 
 
 And while many commuters heckled demonstrators as they marched up Market Street, others were confused as to why BART kept opening and closing the two stations. BART authorities closed and re-opened the Powell Street station four times between 5:47 p.m. and 8:24 p.m., with the station remaining closed for a total of one hour and 38 minutes. The Civic Center station was opened and closed three times between 5:27 p.m. and 8:35 p.m., with the station being closed for a total of two hours and 36 minutes. 
 
 BART authorities did not cut cellular communications service during Monday's protest. 
 
 'Trying to get home' 
 
 Carole R. Brown checked BART's online schedule before leaving work to catch her train home to Oakland on Monday evening. It was open then, but by the time she got the station, authorities had closed it. 
 
 "I support the protesters," Brown said. "But I'm trying to get home. BART shouldn't have closed the station." 
 
 Commuters had packed the Civic Center station earlier than usual for the evening rush-hour commute Monday afternoon, in an effort to get out of town before the scheduled 5 p.m. start of the protest. 
 
 Yvette Delozoda, 45, argued with some of the protesters as she was trying to get to Daly City. "They're hurting people who work for a living. I just want it to be safe for everyone. Not every cop out here is trying to kill us." 
 
 Protester Mario Fernandez, 27, Oakland said he thought BART overreacted by shutting down the Civic Center Station. 
 
 "They're saying we're disrupting service - we're not," he said outside the station. "They overreacted, just like when they overreacted and shot Charles Hill and when they overreacted and shot Oscar Grant." 
 
 Marching on Market 
 
 At 5:40 p.m., about 100 protesters walked east down the middle of Market Street chanting, "From England to the bay, the cops must pay," in an apparent reference to recent riots in England. At its peak, nearly 200 eventually massed and marched - lined on either side by 50 police in riot gear with batons at the ready - to the front of the Ferry Building entrance before turning in the face of police guarding its entrance. 
 
 Many then roamed up and down Market Street for the next couple of hours. Authorities would briefly close the transit stations as demonstrators marched past the entrances. 
 
 The protests have ramped up online since the July 11 protest resulted in service disruptions and closures of the Civic Center, Powell and 16th Street Mission stations. BART says those protesters coordinated their actions in part with cell phones, prompting the agency to cut off cell service. But some consider the shutdown a violation of constitutionally protected free speech rights. 
 
 On Wednesday, the BART board is scheduled to meet to consider adopting a policy governing when - if ever - the transit agency may switch off its wireless network. The public will have an opportunity to comment at the 9 a.m. meeting at 344 20th St. in Oakland. 
 
 BART board President Bob Franklin saidthe current rationale allows a wireless blackout in BART's subway stations "when there is an imminent threat to the safety of people." 
 
 BART has been the target of an activist group known as Anonymous, which generally targets institutions its supporters consider to be suppressing free speech and Internet freedom. 
 
 "I'm shocked and appalled that it's happening here," Peter Fein, 33, of Ellensburg, Wash., an organizer with the Anonymous group, said Monday. "Free speech is what makes this country different." 
 
 As part of the Anonymous campaign known as "OpBART," the group promises to keep up pressure until BART officials admit they were wrong to cut off the cell-phone service in July, apologize to the public and fire Linton Johnson, the transit agency's chief spokesman, who defended the cutoff. ||||| Bay Area Rapid Transit officials have made at least four arrests and closed two subway stations as protesters gathered at the height of the evening commute for the second Monday in a row, according to the agency and local news accounts. 
 
 About 100 protesters who gathered at 5 p.m. this evening outside stations and on train platforms were from two organizations. One group is angered by fatal officer-involved shootings over the last two years, and the other by the agency's move earlier this month to thwart a demonstration by shutting off cellphone service. 
 
 According to local news accounts, BART officers arrested four people on the Civic Center Station train platform not long after Monday's protest began. Some witnesses reported shouting matches between angry commuters and protesters who have snarled the busy commute three times now since July 11. BART is used by hundreds of thousands of regional commuters to cross the Bay from San Francisco to points east. 
 
 By 5:30 p.m., BART reported closing San Francisco's Powell Street and Civic Center stations. Protesters began marching down Market Street, the city's main diagonal artery, toward the Ferry Building, blocking traffic in places. 
 
 Both subway stations were reopened shortly after 6 p.m., then closed again. 
 
 Officials with the San Francisco agency that operates municipal buses and cable cars also closed its Civic Center station, which shares an entry area with BART, and has replaced the storied Powell Street cable car popular with tourists with a shuttle bus. 
 
 Some who gathered in the stations were with a group known as No Justice No BART, which is protesting two fatal officer-involved shootings, most recently that of a transient named Charles Hill who was intoxicated and armed with a knife. Backers of Anonymous, the loose organization of hackers, had gathered outside the stations to demonstrate. 
 
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 --Lee Romney in San Francisco 
 
 Photo: A Bay Area Rapid Transit train. Credit: Los Angeles Times
– Some 45 people were arrested yesterday during the latest protest against San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit's decision to cut cellphone service to foil a demonstration earlier this month. The protests forced the closure of two stations at rush hour, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. BART police arrested five who were protesting at the Civic Center platform; city police busted 40 others when they refused to disperse from two street-level protests. Witnesses described shouting matches between the demonstrators and angry commuters facing chaos for the second time in seven days, the Los Angeles Times reports, and the Chronicle paints a picture of what commuters had to deal with: The Powell Station was opened and closed four times and the Civic Center station three times, as BART officials warily eyed the shifting protests. The BART board meets tomorrow to discuss the possibility of adopting a policy on when, if at all, the agency can cut its wireless network.