BART real-time departure screens coming TRANSIT BART to roll out real-time station departure screens

The BART's real-time arrival information sign is photographed on Friday, July 20, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif. The first one was installed recently at the Embarcadero station. The BART's real-time arrival information sign is photographed on Friday, July 20, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif. The first one was installed recently at the Embarcadero station. Photo: Yue Wu, The Chronicle Photo: Yue Wu, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close BART real-time departure screens coming 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Regular BART riders know the scenario all too well: You're hustling to catch a train and hear the roar of something pulling into the station. You race down the escalator, gently elbowing people out of the way only to get to the platform and find out that it's another train; yours is running 10 minutes late.

At most BART stations, there's no video monitor or electronic sign alerting you to the next arriving trains until you reach the platform. The lone exception is the Embarcadero Station, where a handy video screen installed as an experiment two years ago displays real-time arrival messages for BART and Muni Metro trains leaving the station as well as Muni buses and streetcars departing nearby.

But at least 13 more BART stations are scheduled to get real-time train departure screens as part of an effort to overhaul signage at some of the transit system's busiest stations. And congressional funding announced last week will allow BART to outfit all of its downtown San Francisco stations with the monitors, spokeswoman Luna Salaver said.

"This way a person knows if they have time to walk leisurely or if they have to walk more briskly to get to the platform," she said.

Or if there's been one of those relatively rare but frustrating delays that means a long wait for the next train, stuck inside the station.

BART directors have long called for the agency to put real-time train arrival signs on station concourses, but until the past couple of years, budgets have been tight.

Director Tom Radulovich said BART staffers were at first resistant to the signs, figuring their maintenance could be troublesome. Some wanted to sell the signs to advertisers. But the board pressed for BART to install its own signs, which use information from 511, and staffers now believe they can help prevent crowding, especially in downtown San Francisco.

"Giving riders real-time information at stations can really help decongest those stations," he said. "People rush down the stairs to wait for their train. If they know it's not coming for 15 minutes, maybe they'll add money to their ticket or grab a cup of coffee while they're waiting."

The real-time displays are being installed as part of a gradual program to replace BART signage in its 44 stations. The cost of installing the monitors - many stations will have more than one - is about $520,000, Salaver said, and the work at the first batch of stations getting new signage, including the monitors, will be done by 2014.

Pleasant Hill Station is due to be outfitted with the monitors soon, then Civic Center, Millbrae, Richmond, El Cerrito del Norte, 12th Street/Oakland City Center, Coliseum/Oakland Airport, Dublin/Pleasanton, Fremont, Daly City, El Cerrito Plaza, Montgomery and San Francisco International Airport. A new award of congressional funding will give BART an additional $3.1 million, which will allow BART to add Powell Street, increase the number of monitors elsewhere in downtown San Francisco and possibly add other stations, Salaver said.

The lone real-time monitor now in service seems a bit lonely and stuck in an unglamorous location above a set of garbage and recycling cans just inside the Davis Street entrance. Most BART riders, rushing to make their trains after work, didn't even give it a look on a recent weekday. But Quinton and Juanita Bayer, visiting from Philadelphia and staying near SFO, were thrilled to find the screen telling them when the next three trains would arrive.

"It's really helpful," he said. "It's the first thing I noticed coming into the station."

Radulovich said he hopes BART will share the real-time monitors with other transit agencies, as the experimental model in Embarcadero does, to make it easier for passengers to navigate the Bay Area's maze of transit agencies.

"Certainly we need to do better," he said. "With 26 operators, we can at least make it seem like a single system."