Passengers have mixed reactions to new BART trains

Hundreds of BART riders put a test model of the Bay Area transportation agency’s “fleet of the future” through its paces at the Pleasant Hill Station Saturday.

The three-car test train came complete with brightly colored seats, six display monitors with real-time maps and three doors per car instead of the current two — the latter meant to get passengers on and off the train more quickly.

Overnight testing for the train should start in the next two weeks, said Paul Oversier, assistant general manager for BART, with daytime runs starting in December and tests with passengers starting in early 2017.

The seats are narrower, 20 inches wide from the current 22. And there’s fewer of them: about four less per car.

striding through the new BART cars: Do the toys have proper accessories? striding through the new BART cars: Do the toys have proper accessories? Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 30 Caption Close Passengers have mixed reactions to new BART trains 1 / 30 Back to Gallery

The ceilings are about 5 inches higher. There’s a souped-up air-conditioning system designed to blast air more efficiently during hot, sticky commutes. And there’s a bike rack designed to lock around tires and hold bicycles in place without their riders.

Regular BART commuters from Pleasant Hill and elsewhere into the East Bay bemoaned the lack of seats available on the new cars. Already, the current cars with four more seats are overcrowded, they said, and standing for an hour commute isn’t exactly comfortable.

Lee Walden, who uses BART for his weekday trip from Walnut Creek to Oakland City Center, said the fresh, modern cars “sure do look nice,” but he’s concerned the seating shortage makes the car more ideal for short city stops than longer-haul commutes like his.

“This is a nice car for city streets where you stop every other block,” Walden said. “But for dozens of miles? Where you have to stand up and hold on? It’s so tiring.”

BART said that the number of new cars coming on-board should increase overall capacity on the trains by about 50 percent by 2021. And with an increase in ridership projected at about 100,000 new riders each weekday over the next decade, there’s no time like the present to upgrade.

“The key message is that overcrowding relief is coming,” said Gail Murray, the director of BART’s District 1, which includes the Pleasant Hill station.

Aisles on the trains are wider thanks to the narrower seats, which are a couple of inches higher to allow more room for luggage underneath and spaced to bring about more legroom.

After he ducked through the doorway of the test train — the height of which hasn’t changed — one 6-foot-8-inch man said the higher ceilings and increased legroom gave him more room to stretch out.

“They’re pretty comfortable,” said Thomas Patterson, a Concord resident. “There’s more room. They look good. They smell good — for now.”

BART’s also trying to make it easier to bring bikes onto trains, improving the current juggling act that forces riders to hold up their bike along the horizontal steel bars built into existing trains.

One cyclist, Kenyi Yamada, wheeled his bike onto the test model at Pleasant Hill to test for himself the rubber clamps that squeeze around bike tires to hold them upright.

“It’s definitely an improvement,” Yamada said, but he noted how his bike’s rear tire stuck out across the car’s door opening, and how it wobbled a little too much for his liking.

“It feels a little unsafe, to be honest,” Yamada said. “Someone could come and kick the wheel coming in or out of the train.”

Erick Brady, who was nearby, chimed in. He said he used to work in the bike industry.

“This is not a good idea,” Brady said, adding that a misplaced accidental kick from a rushing commuter could bend the bike’s frame or damage the tire. He suggested a clamp system that would latch around the body of the bike to secure it.

As its designers finish the details over the coming months, BART plans to start ramping up production of the new cars, part of a $1.5 billion contract with Bombardier Transit Corp., to roll out 775 new cars by 2021.

Sixty cars are planned to be rolled out by the end of 2017.

Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @michael_bodley