BART can’t keep pace with rising 'crush loads’

A passenger (right) getting off at the Rockridge BART station has to navigate through a crush of commuters trying to board a San Francisco train in Oakland, Calif. on Tuesday, March 24, 2015. Ridership continues to rise on the regional transit system. less A passenger (right) getting off at the Rockridge BART station has to navigate through a crush of commuters trying to board a San Francisco train in Oakland, Calif. on Tuesday, March 24, 2015. Ridership ... more Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 17 Caption Close BART can’t keep pace with rising 'crush loads’ 1 / 17 Back to Gallery

With a familiar beep-beep, a Fremont-bound BART train rumbles into MacArthur Station in Oakland and an equally familiar routine begins. Hundreds of passengers exit. Most walk, some jog, across the platform and form neat lines as a San Francisco train rolls in.

Each of the 10 cars on the arriving train is already packed full of morning commuters, but only a few riders get out. It seems impossible, but most of the queued-up crowd squeezes on board. On one car, the guy standing nearest the entrance sucks in his gut, lets out a deep breath and puts his hands behind his back as the doors close.

“You could feel the heat coming out of that train just standing here,” said Edwin Charlebois, a UCSF epidemiologist and veteran BART rider who chose to wait for the next train, hoping there would be a little more space.

The tightly packed BART cars during commutes these days are a result of the transit agency’s success — and its failure.

Weekday ridership now averages about 420,000 — 100,000 more than five years ago. But BART hasn’t kept pace with that growth and is hobbled by its inadequate infrastructure.

In addition to an aging fleet of railcars, BART’s ability to run more trains is limited by an outmoded control system and an insufficient number of crossover tracks that could allow the transit system to send more trains to crowded stations.

Mornings at MacArthur are particularly miserable because it’s a transfer point between two lines hauling heavy loads.

“MacArthur is the worst,” said Emily Massari, 37, of Oakland, a human resources manager at a San Francisco startup. She gets on BART at Rockridge Station, where the trains also arrive crowded but there are fewer people waiting to squeeze on.

“It’s where the most people get on and the least get off,” Massari said of MacArthur. “The combination just doesn’t work there.”

Commute hour rush

BART’s railcars seat an average of about 60 people. The transit agency figures each can comfortably accommodate about 47 more people standing, which gives each standee about 6.7 square feet of space. The Federal Transit Administration recommends that trains carry a maximum of 115 riders per car.

However, during BART’s busiest commute hours — 6 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 7 p.m., but expanding — trains often haul 140 people or more. That gives 80 people standing about 3.9 square feet apiece — not quite a 2-by-2 square.

At most, a BART car can hold what transit planners call a “crush load” of 200 people.

As every rider knows, sometimes you just have to take a deep breath, pile onto a train packed with sweaty people, bikes and backpacks, and deal with the discomfort.

“Sometimes, at the end of the day, you’re just so tired that you just want to get on the train, no matter how crowded it is, and get to your stop,” said Tania Martin, 48, an administrative assistant, as she waited for a train at Montgomery Station on her commute home.

Martin and other riders are going to have to deal with the crush for a few more years before new railcars start rolling. Each will have a little more room, and there will be more of them. The first 10 of the cars will arrive this fall for testing, but it will be 2017 before a significant number start hauling passengers.

New railcars ordered

The new cars will have about five fewer seats but more standing room — exactly how much, BART couldn’t say — and three doors on each side instead of two. BART has ordered 775 cars — an increase over its existing 669-car fleet — and hopes eventually to grow that order to 1,081 cars. That would allow BART to run more 10-car trains and, possibly, more frequent trains.

BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said the first 10 cars will be tested for about a year, without passengers, mostly when BART is closed. They’ll start hauling riders in September 2016. During 2017, 44 cars will be delivered and pressed into service after a month of testing. New cars will continue to arrive through 2021.

“When those new cars start coming in, there’s going to be some sunshine here,” General Manager Grace Crunican told the BART Board of Directors in February. “In the meantime, we’re going to have grease on our hands getting everything in place. It’s going to be a tough slog for the next two to three years.”

BART officials are also considering plans to squeeze a little more capacity out of the existing fleet by:

•Rebuilding six badly damaged railcars and getting them back on the tracks.

•Hiring more mechanics, or having them work overtime, to speed the maintenance and repair of railcars, enabling more of them to remain in service.

•Rejiggering schedules by turning around more trains before the end of the line, which would allow increased service at some of the busiest stations.

•Pressing into regular service some “ready reserve” trains, now on standby for breakdowns or emergencies.

No quick fixes

The first three options would cost money, and BART directors need to decide which of them to include in their next budget. The fourth would make BART’s service less reliable, since additional trains wouldn’t be available in breakdowns. Directors will consider the options in the next couple of months as they prepare the budget for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

Infrastructure improvements could also provide commuters some relief, though none is a quick fix. BART is focused on delivering what it calls “the big three” — the railcars plus a bigger and more modern maintenance yard in Hayward and a new train control system.

Other fixes being considered include constructing more crossovers — the tracks that allow trains to turn back before the end of the line.

One new crossover opened two weeks ago. The track improvement between the Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill stations allows BART to turn around trains more quickly toward San Francisco, giving riders in Walnut Creek, Lafayette and Orinda a better chance at getting a seat. It will enable BART to run more 10-car trains on the line, which is the system’s busiest.

BART is also contemplating ways to increase the capacity of the crowded Embarcadero and Montgomery stations, including building additional platforms on the opposite sides of the trains.

But the biggest possible infrastructure changes — like a second Transbay Tube, express tracks or additional lines or stations in San Francisco or Oakland — would take decades and require a huge investment, including tax, toll or bond money that would have to be approved by voters.

Tips to cope

For now the crush remains, and BART offers a few tools to help riders cope. They include a symbol on BART’s online trip planner that shows how much crowding is expected on each train, and a “crowded car survival guide” that suggests removing backpacks, placing belongings on the floor and moving to the center of the car.

Passengers have their own suggestions for surviving the crush. They range from politeness to patience to planning ahead.

“Just try to be courteous,” Charlebois said. “People have what I like to call kinesthetic backpack blindness. They forget that their bag takes up space, especially when they spin around and hit people with it.”

Patience key

Michael Piper, 28, a project manager for a San Francisco art studio, commutes from Rockridge Station. He takes somewhat of a Zen approach to the crowding.

“I’m not in a rush,” he said. “I can wait for the next train.”

Massari takes a similar approach — with a little planning thrown in. “I don’t have a job where I need to be there right at a certain time,” she said, “and I feel sorry for the people who do. So I let them get on.”

But she tries to time her arrival at Rockridge when trains are scheduled closely together, since the second train typically has a little extra room.

Riding upstream for seat

Many passengers use a practice known as “back-riding,” especially in the evening commute out of downtown San Francisco.

Instead of boarding at a packed downtown station, they take a train in the other direction for a few stops and climb aboard before it gets crowded.

“There are even times when I take the Millbrae train all the way to Glen Park and then come back,” said Marie Fahy, a 45-year-old technology support worker who lives in the East Bay and works near Powell Station.

BART has become so crowded over the past two years “that I can’t ever get a seat,” Julia Marquez said as she waiting in a 12-deep line at Montgomery. “Unless I ride backwards.”

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan

What’s not working

Issue: Trains are packed to the limit during morning and evening commutes.

What’s been done: BART has ordered a new and expanded fleet of railcars, but it will be 2017 before enough of them arrive to make a difference. The transit system also opened crossover tracks in central Contra Costa County, allowing it to increase service on BART’s busiest line.

Who’s responsible: Grace Crunican, BART general manager, (510) 464-6065, gcrunic@bart.gov

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