Human waste shuts down BART escalators

An escalator at the Civic Center BART station was inoperable on Wednesday. An escalator at the Civic Center BART station was inoperable on Wednesday. Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close Human waste shuts down BART escalators 1 / 12 Back to Gallery

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was shared and upvoted on Reddit on October 30th, 2018. The original publishing date was six years earlier.

When work crews pulled open a broken BART escalator at San Francisco's Civic Center Station last month, they found so much human excrement in its works they had to call a hazardous-materials team.

While the sheer volume of human waste was surprising, its presence was not. Once the stations close, the bottom of BART station stairwells in downtown San Francisco are often a prime location for homeless people to camp for the night or find a private place to relieve themselves.

All those biological excretions can gum up the wheels and gears of BART's escalators, shutting them down for long periods of extended repairs, increasing station cleaning costs and creating an unpleasant aroma for morning commuters.

Five of the nine escalators that weren't working at BART stations on Wednesday were in downtown San Francisco, said Jim Allison, a BART spokesman. While there are many reasons a BART escalator can break down, the beating they take at night is among the most acute.

The problem is tough to combat, especially with so few downtown public restrooms open late, BART authorities said.

Officers have to witness someone in the act to issue a citation, said Officer Era Jenkins, a BART police spokeswoman.

Must witness to cite

"Nobody wants to be walking in urine and feces, I know that, (but) if we don't see it or the person doesn't admit to it, they can just say it was someone else," Jenkins said. "Certain crimes you don't see, you can't enforce."

BART police officers sweep "each and every stairwell at each and every station" before the stations open in the morning and ask people who spent the night in the station to move somewhere else, Jenkins said.

If they spot a mess, the officers alert cleaning crews, Jenkins said. Station surveillance cameras usually are not monitored when the stations are closed, she said.

San Francisco police officers also can check the downtown station stairwells, but they generally only respond when someone complains, which isn't often, said Albie Esparza, a San Francisco police spokesman.

"When they are out of sight, people don't usually call about them," he said.

Not much BART can do

BART officials point out that they have little ability to change the reasons people camp at the base of BART stairs or use the plaza of the 16th Street/Mission BART Station as a public urinal, an issue highlighted in a recent Chronicle Watch.

"As much as we like to have an oasis from the rest of the world, we don't look at (these issues) in isolation, we look at (them) as part of a puzzle," Allison said.

BART officials have recently begun meeting with San Francisco authorities to explore ways of cleaning up the 16th Street plaza. Those conversations could easily evolve to encompass the downtown stairwells, Allison said.

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