BART to reduce hours after losing 90% of ridership

Passengers wait to board a BART train during the evening rush hour. San Francisco had its first shelter-in-place day on March 17th, 2020 in response to the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. Passengers wait to board a BART train during the evening rush hour. San Francisco had its first shelter-in-place day on March 17th, 2020 in response to the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. Photo: Douglas Zimmerman/SFGate Photo: Douglas Zimmerman/SFGate Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close BART to reduce hours after losing 90% of ridership 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

BART is reducing its operating hours after losing nearly all of its regular riders due to the coronavirus crisis in the Bay Area.

Citing a 90% decline in ridership, BART announced it will be cutting some service starting March 23. The coming changes are as follows and will be in effect until further notice:

— As of Monday, BART will begin weekday (Monday-Friday) service at 5 a.m. and end at 9 p.m., three hours earlier than its usual midnight closure.

— Starting March 28, weekend service will run from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. BART cautions that "all riders must be in the system by 8:45 p.m. to have a guaranteed ride to their destination."

— Train frequency will remain the same for weekdays and weekends.

"This decision is being made now because all 9 counties in the Bay Area have shelter-in-place orders and our ridership has plummeted 90%," said BART General Manager Bob Powers. "We are taking a data-driven approach to these decisions to ensure as few people as possible are impacted. These are extraordinary times and we did not take this decision lightly. Our system operates using public dollars and we have an obligation to make financially sound decisions about service levels."

BART estimated that "a sustained ridership loss of 90% and a 50% reduction of economic activity impacting other revenue sources could reduce BART's monthly revenues by approximately $60M."

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Katie Dowd is a senior digital editor with SFGATE. Email her: katie.dowd@sfgate.com