BART’s 'upstreamers’ chase rare commodity: an open seat

Lorin Beer of Pleasant Hill settles into his BART seat after riding “upstream” from Powell Station to Civic Center. Many eastbound commuters ride in the opposite direction to grab a seat for the journey home. less Lorin Beer of Pleasant Hill settles into his BART seat after riding “upstream” from Powell Station to Civic Center. Many eastbound commuters ride in the opposite direction to grab a seat for the journey ... more Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close BART’s 'upstreamers’ chase rare commodity: an open seat 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

It’s 5 p.m. in downtown San Francisco, and most BART riders are going with the flow, squeezing into packed trains while bracing for a long ride home on their feet amid end-of-day armpits and bikes and pungent breath.

But something else is going on in the underground stations. The upstreamers are doing their thing.

Yearning to nab a seat where they can relax and fire up Facebook or “Candy Crush,” they ride in the opposite direction for one stop or several, then cross the platform, board an emptier train and come back in style.

As BART ridership grows — but without the agency’s fleet growing in turn — so do the ranks of the upstreamers. In the mornings, they ply their trade near the ends of the East Bay lines, in places like Pleasanton and Fremont.

They’re easiest to spot in the afternoon at the Civic Center Station in San Francisco. As trains from the Financial District pull in, they burst from the doors. While most people head for the escalators, they speed-walk across the platform, zigzagging between harried passengers to get in line for an East Bay-bound train.

Minutes later, they’re back on BART, often with a choice seat. Armed with an extensive knowledge of train schedules and an extreme aversion to body odor, they’re playing an elaborate game of strategy — and they’re winning.

“I size up the scene,” explained David Hammon, 76, on a recent afternoon while waiting for a train at Civic Center, where he had arrived after a two-station upstream trip from the Montgomery Station before starting the trip home to North Concord. “You’re dealing with an experienced BART-er here.”

The spoils

The spoils of the scheme are considerable. Riders with computers can get some work done. Sitting means no moving around to make way for riders with bikes or babies, or struggling to maintain balance while grabbing a pole or a strap or a fellow rider.

Sitting also means personal space on train cars that often fill up with so-called crush loads. BART cars have nearly 60 seats, but, during rush hour, more than 100 people crowd in.

“If you’re standing next to somebody with their arm in the air, it can be torture,” said Lori Trevino, 47, an upstreamer who backtracks in San Francisco before going home to El Cerrito.

Downtown San Francisco is the hot zone for the tactic. Commute trains headed for the Transbay Tube are typically jammed by the time they reach the Embarcadero and Montgomery stations. Powell is a crapshoot. But riding back to Civic Center often pays off.

Of course, as more people ride upstream, it becomes harder to for others to obtain a seat without doing the same thing. It’s a rush for the back of the line.

Gauri Joshi, 31, whose ride home from San Francisco to Fremont takes 50 minutes, estimates that her chances of sitting jump from nearly zero to 70 percent by retreating two stops, from Montgomery to Civic Center.

Fernanda Costa, 57, rides back to Civic Center from Embarcadero, where the platform and the trains are sometimes so packed that she can’t even get on a train, much less sit down for her 45-minute ride to Union City.

“People are stinky and rude and obnoxious,” Costa said. “It’s like Jekyll and Hyde — that’s what people are like when they get onto BART.”

Daily grind

BART calls the strategy backriding, though most practitioners don’t have a name for the technique. It’s just their daily grind to catch a clean seat and an easy ride home — and it’s only getting more frequent as ridership grows.

According to BART, there were an average of 441,000 trips each weekday in October. Weekday transbay ridership has swelled 12 percent in the past two years, according to agency figures from September.

But relief is a long way off. Some 775 new train cars are set to hit the tracks starting in December 2016, and BART officials expect them to immediately improve train crowding.

Commuters also upstream on Muni and other public transit systems. Bus riders have been known to walk back a stop or two to obtain a seat. But the practice gains most urgency on BART, with its long rides and sometimes sweltering cars.

“They know when the trains are arriving. They know their spots. They know it all,” said BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost. “You used to only go to Powell to get a seat, but now you have to go to Civic Center.”

There are two types of upstreamers. The opportunists time their rides backward so they still catch the same train they would have caught had they waited. The die-hards, meanwhile, ride back and catch a later train, trading time for comfort.

All of them study which part of train is most likely to have seats. They also favor window seats deep inside a car, where it’s unlikely they’ll have to fork over a spot to an elderly or pregnant person who comes aboard.

“After doing this much work,” said Rohit Prabhakar, 32, who rides home from San Francisco to the West Dublin/Pleasanton Station, “I don’t want to lose my spot.”