At the end of April many Chronicle and SFGate employees lost their much coveted free parking spaces, which were getting in the way of office buildings and condos yet to be built.

I was one of the dispossessed. Now I had to pay $20 or more for parking like regular people or take public transit. (Yeah, I know — cue the tiny violin music.)

Of course, I couldn't take transit all the way from Pacifica to 5th and Mission. Pacifica is called a transit desert for a reason. There is a SamTrans stop a quarter mile away from my house, but let's just say SamTrans buses take the scenic route to Colma BART. I could walk the four miles faster, and I have no cartilage in my knees.

Then I learned that motorcycle parking was free at my closest stop. That settled it. I'd ride my Piaggio to Colma, BART to Powell Street and hoof the rest of the way to work. Piece of cake.

Here's what I learned in my first three months of riding BART as a commuter. Seasoned BART riders can stop reading now. You already know this stuff.

Colma is a great place to catch BART because the city is populated mostly by dead people. The more dead people, the fewer live people to compete with for seats and parking spots.

At $3 a day, Colma's parking fee is about average for BART stations. Spaces are plentiful, at least if you get there early. The free motorcycle parking rarely fills up.

Colma is a lousy place to catch BART because of the bump in fares outside the city limits. For example, Daly City-to-Powell Street round trip costs $6.70 while the round-trip fare to Powell from the next northbound stop, Balboa Park, within the city limits, is only $4.

Roundtrip Powell Street fare from Colma is $7.40, or $37 per week.

It was cheaper for me to drive than take BART if parking costs are excluded. The gas and maintenance costs for my car for the 26-mile roundtrip were about $20 per week. But city parking fees tip the scale overwhelmingly in BART's favor.

Riding BART is more relaxing than the daily grind of freeway commuting. No longer do I have to contend with the accidents-waiting-to-happen who veer into my lane without looking or signaling. Or the everybody-else-be-damned entitled who jump the queue before the 6th Street offramp of I-280. Or the smugly self-centered who text on their phones in stop-and-go freeway traffic, a popular pastime especially among Tesla drivers.

Nobody reads the paper anymore. The days of coaches packed with commuters reading newspapers on BART are long gone. After scores of rides, I have seen just two people reading a paper. One was flipping through the Chronicle, the other the East Bay Times.

Yet BART is great for reading. I knocked off three and a half Kindle novels while on the train or waiting for it. While I have seen a few people cracking hard-cover and paperback books on BART, but I have yet to see another Kindle fan. There must be Kindle commuters I'm not noticing.

While I read more, I listen to NPR less. I used to spend the morning drive with Steve Inskeep, Rachel Martin and David Greene, but no more. Really miss those pledge drives.

Talking among strangers rarely happens. Screen gazing and bud-plugged ears do no invite unsolicited conversation. If someone does talk to you, it's usually about a delay, a police action or the occasional flash flood in a BART station.

An exception is riders headed to the airport. Two British ladies on a global tour were happy to share how much they enjoyed San Francisco over Pride weekend.

Each BART coach seems to have its own separate micro clime. I have been in comfortably air-conditioned cars, in no-AC cars and in cars that have the heater going full sauna on a 80-degree day in July. The latter prompted two co-riders to break the BART code of silence. "Should we tell the driver?" asked one.

My ears are suffering. People who listen to earbud music on BART, how do you stand it? You must have eardrums of steel. To hear what's playing above the roll-of-nickels-in-a-blender screech of the wheels requires pumping the volume to tinnitus-inducing settings. BART signs posted in cars brag that the re-engineered tapering of wheels has reduced noise complaints on legacy trains by 73 percent. I must be one of the 27th percenters.

Too bad no one reads the Chronicle on BART any more. Those cochlear implant ads that sometimes wrap around the front page could find an audience.

I will admit, however, that the new BART Bombardier E cars that I have ridden on two occasions are significantly quieter than the older coaches. Unfortunately, maintenance issues have slowed the rollout of the next-generation D and E railcars.

Personal space is an issue. Passengers standing in a BART train, crowded or not, never take off backpacks. Some just can't be bothered. But also, doing so would mean one hand on the pack, one on a pole or strap and none to hold the all-important cell phone.

The lack of etiquette shocked me. The "priority seats" for seniors, the disabled and pregnant women are often filled by people who aren't old, disabled or expecting, even in crowded trains where elderly people are hanging on straps. So far, I have not witnessed any of these squatters offer their seat to an old person.

One time a young German backpacker plopped himself in the priority seats. The man smelled like he had been hiking for days in the Sierra and had had no time to shower before catching the SFO airport train. Not only was he monopolizing the seats meant for seniors, but his body odor was so bad it actually forced the older man I was sitting next to abandon his seat and retreat to another in the back of the train.

It must have been a fun flight for his seat mates.

Compared with some of the stranger things people have seen on BART — for example, a man rolling a refrigerator he had just purchased onto a car or a piece of raw meat left on a seat — my experiences have been tame.

RELATED: Etiquette experts explain how not to be rude on BART

Recently a woman who asked me to move even though there were seats available in the last row of the car. They're "too confining," she said.

Grateful for my seat, she explained how she was on her way to meet her ex-boyfriend in South San Francisco, then launched into a rambling diatribe about how BART was too crowded compared to when she first starting riding it in the '80s. She complained that men no longer gave up their seats for ladies unless "the women were real old," and even then they seldom did it. She said she was thinking of buying a car so she could drive instead of taking BART.

I mentioned something about how commuting on the Bay Area's freeways wasn't as pleasant as it sounds, but she was already getting off at 16th Street Station, her ex in South City apparently forgotten.

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Mike Moffitt is an SFGATE Digital Reporter. Email: moffitt@sfgate.com. Twitter: @Mike_at_SFGate.