Ashby ::: Faregate report -- one entry, one exit, one out of service.

Train is on time and I get a seat; good trip.

12th Street ::: PA is telling some long and involved story about a train out of service at Balboa. I can't keep up with the details, but it seems that the upshot is that there are big delays in SF and to the East Bay. Fortunately, I'm already in the East Bay, so my trip to Ashby should be uneventful.

Ashby ::: Some sort of announcement on the PA as I arrive. I've missed most of it, but caught something about "restarting train traffic through Embarcadero." Sounds bad. Fortunately, I'm going to Oakland today, and the Fremont train arrives on time. Unfortunately, it then spends more time sitting than rolling, and I arrive late at my meeting. Oh well, it's only a meeting.

Montgomery ::: New faregate installation in progress!!!

16th Street Mission ::: New faregates are installed!!!

12th Street Oakland ::: Transferring from Pittsburg train to Richmond train (as you know, you cannot make this connection during the day, but you must make it in the evening). This used to be a nice smooth stop, but now both always trains sit at 12th Street for 4 or 5 minutes. What's up with that? Maybe I need to ask the folks at the ATU 1555 message board.

Ashby ::: Your faregate status report follows -- one entry gate (with queue), one exit gate (with queue), one out of service (with station agent poking around).

Onboard ::: Car is bursting with small children, apparently a class on a field trip. They're all hopped up on frosted flakes and root beer, and they're bouncing off the walls. It's like Chuck E. Cheese on wheels.

Wanna join the BART Board of Directors? Contra Costa Times says:

BART seeks applications from people interested in filling a vacant seat on its nine-member board. Director Willie Kennedy of San Francisco resigned her position effective Jan. 31 for personal and health reasons. Two years remain on her term. Submit by 5 p.m. Feb. 12, letters of interest and biographical data to the Office of the District Secretary, BART, 800 Madison St., Oakland, CA 94607. The board will conduct interviews in February. To be eligible, you must be a registered voter and reside in District 7, which includes Albany, Richmond, East Richmond Heights, El Cerrito, Emeryville, Rollingwood, San Pablo and portions of Berkeley, El Sobrante, Oakland and San Francisco. Candidates must also be citizens of the United States and at least 18 years old. To verify eligibility, call BART at 510-464-6087.

This district includes a tiny sliver of San Francisco, and Willie Kennedy lives in -- and primarily represents -- SF. (Perhaps explaining why the Board was silent when BART eliminated half of the service between Richmond and SF.) It's time that the Board had a member who lives in and strongly represents the Berkeley-Albany-El Cerrito-Richmond corridor.

Ashby ::: Faregates are back in service.

Onboard ::: Headphone guy is singing along with his tunes...getting louder...positively belting out the tunes. If you can call it that. Is he just making this up? Completely tuneless, no rhyme at all...is he crazy, or just obnoxious? No one seems willing to find out by telling him to shut up.

Onboard ::: Full train. Fuller at 12th street. Jam packed at 19th Street. Crush load at Macarthur.

Ashby ::: Flood off the train. One exit gate. Ms. Ramirez is trying to unjam the other exit gate...flips the top down, and it's working again. I'm out. By now there's an exit queue all the way across the station and descending down the platform stairs.

C'mon, BART, let's get going with those faregates! If there's a station more in need of new/more gates than Ashby, I'd like to know what it is.

Ashby ::: Zero entry gates in service. One faregate sports the dreaded orange "out of service" sticker across its mouth. Station agent is pointedly ignoring us as we hesitantly approach the handicapped gate. No other way to the train, so we finally walk on through. Free ride!

Platform escalator is back in service.

Montgomery ::: Richmond train is late.

Ashby ::: I swarm, along with the usual crowd, up the sole staircase, but we are battling a smaller crowd trying to head down the staircase. Ah, I see...the (down) platform escalator is out of service and cordoned off. Handy.

Rumor has it that new faregates are being installed somewhere in the SF Mission area -- 16th, 24th, or Balboa. Anyone seen this?

MK writes to remind LWB not to forget the BART ticket machines. Yup; they're always either broken (the original IBM ones), or utterly baffling to use (newer credit card machines). In fact, MK has let us know about an online BART ticket machine simulator that was apparently developed by a professional interaction designer [what is interaction design?] as an example of lousy design. Check it out! Especially if you work for BART and are responsible for purchasing the purported new generation fare machines. K? K.

Been pretty uneventful around the ol' train system lately. No disasters, no annoyances. This is good. On the other hand, nothing exciting to report either. No progress on faregate installation, for example.

JMC says that he has a gif that shows the configuration of 5 new faregates for Ashby. World famous BART spokesman Mike Healy must have miscounted when he told me 6. This is unfortunate, as it probably means that BART will run 3 in the peak direction and 2 in the off-peak. That will be an improvement over the current 2-1, but maybe not enough of an improvement, considering the much slower response time of the new gates.

Montgomery ::: Richmond train is late. Must admit, though, this is the first late train that I've had to wait for since December 19. Not bad.

Circa Childrens Hospital ::: PB, you're right! There is some sort of weird lurching, klunking thing going on here. Never noticed it before; perhaps it only afflicts some trains. Well, we have absolutely no idea how BART works, but...the problem is definitely a defective speed control unit.

Montgomery ::: Those pallets of new faregates continue to sit untouched in the back of the station. As far as I know, there have been no new faregates installed since Rockridge in November...has anyone seen work in progress anywhere?

No problems on the train, and I get a seat.

World famous BART spokesman Mike Healy says that Ashby station will get a total of 6 new faregates installed "this coming summer." Presumably these gates will operate with 4 in the peak direction, and 2 in the off-peak. This will be a huge improvement over the current 2-1 arrangement.

Further observation: we've learned that if you have a question for BART, don't bother asking a station attendant (won't know) or writing to BART Customer Service (won't respond). Just send an email to world famous BART spokesman Mike Healy.

Word from PB :::

Do you ever use BART Plus tickets? Instead of displaying the available fare left on the ticket, the faregates should print the predicted probability that the ticket will work next time. I've had a faregate at Civic Center eat my bart plus ticket repeatedly. It's gotten to the point that I get off at powell to avoid BART Plus roulette.

In other news, Didya ever notice the RICHMOND train act strangely between MacArthur and Ashby stations? (OK, this is a loaded question) Shortly out of Mac station, as the train starts to accelerate through the underpass up to the overhead near the childrens hospital, it suddenly lurches back with a lound metallic CLANK! Sometimes it does this 2 or 3 times. Don't tell me this is normal operation. Maybe it's that power sagging thing?

new faregates for everybody.

World famous BART spokesman Mike Healy responds (!) that Ashby will get new faregates "this coming summer." I've asked Mike to put me in touch with the faregate program manager for more details. Stay tuned...

Flashback to yesterday evening ::: Transbay Tube ::: Full stop. Train operator comes on the PA, sounding for all the world like a commercial airline pilot. "Well, folks, we, ah, we've hit a little congestion heading into West Oakland station. We'll be having a little stop and go for a bit. Ah, sorry about the delay... once we get past West Oakland, should be smooth sailing." And please keep your seat belts buckled low and snug across your lap.

About a 10 minute delay results. On the plus side, this is the first significant schedule delay that I've hit in the past month or so, and it's not a bad one.

Well, again more than a week has passed and BART has not responded to our polite inquiry about installation of new faregates. (Mind you, I don't expect a personal response to any crackpot email that I fire off, but if you run a transit system and have a "customer feedback" page on your website, well, I expect at least to get an automated email that says "thanks for writing; we regret that we can't respond to every email.") Well, the Chronicle always quotes "BART spokesman Mike Healy"... think it's mhealy@bart.gov?

TO: mhealy@bart.gov
FROM: LWB
RE: New Ashby faregates?
Dear Mr. Healy,
Can you tell me when new faregates are scheduled to be installed at Ashby, and also confirm that BART will increase the number of gates (currently 3)? Apologies for contacting you directly; BART Customer Service has not responded to several inquiries on this topic.
Many thanks.

Our train operator is a big Raiders fan. Announces, "Your next station stop is 12th Street, Raider Nation."

Montgomery ::: There's a big ol' temporary cage set up, and it's full of pallet after pallet of new faregates!!

Smooth.

It's all good.

Powell ::: Platform escalator is making a loud, rhythmic, and ominous banging noise. Hope it's not heading for a breakdown. Up on the entry level, it's... the new faregates!! Yay!! Funny, though...I'm starting to notice how much slower they are than the original gates. Generally not a problem, but this WILL be a major problem at Ashby if BART doesn't add more faregates.

Embarcadero ::: On the plaform, I pass a man wearing his jammies, slippers, and a coat. He doesn't look like he's homeless or a fratboy, but he must be victim of some sort of practical joke. He seems to be taking it well.

Ashby ::: Ms. Ramirez is standing by to unjam the two exit gates, but they work fine. Nonetheless, they can't keep up -- there's a huge queue of people waiting to get out. (Still no response from BART Customer Service to our inquiry about replacement faregates at Ashby.)

Ashby ::: one entry gate in operation, and 25 or 30 people are queued up trying to enter the station. Station Agent strolls over and reverses one of the exit gates, giving us two entry gates. Just in time...here comes the SF train.

Embarcadero ::: The street escalator has returned to service!

Embarcadero ::: I was wrong. They did not get the street escalator working yet.

12th St ::: New faregates! Yum!

Linoleum floor test vehicle. I like the linoleum floor. Much cleaner than the carpet floor, and should stay nice longer.

Ashby ::: Ms. Ramirez is poised to immediately unjam the balky Ashby faregates, but I get through before they jam.

Embarcadero. Street escalator remains out of service (day 5), but repair team is back on the job. I've got a feeling that they'll have it working by this evening.

Embarcadero. Street escalator still out of service. Repairman has left the scene.

All good with the train.

Ms. Ramirez is working at Ashby tonight. :)

Nuthin' new here, but the Chron has an article about delays in the BART extension to SFO. The interesting part is that the contractor is being penalized $65,000 per day for having failed to finish in November 2002. Three months of penalties could add up to around 4 million bucks.

The weather is absolutely beautiful this morning, and BART runs without a hitch. A nice start for the week.

At Embarcadero, the street escalator remains out of service and cordoned off (since Thursday morning), but at least there is now someone working on it.

Embarcadero. Street escalator STILL is out of service and cordoned off, with no signs of a repair effort. Down on the platform, the electronic sign says Richmond train in 21 minutes. Hmm. The one scheduled to arrive in 2 minutes? Dunno. And I just let a Pittsburg train go by. The people queued up ahead of me are confused. So am I. Is it coming or not? We continue being confused for a few minutes. Richmond train arrives. Everything goes fine from here on out.

BART to SFO in March 2003? Maybe, maybe not, says the Chronicle. BART says that it will miss the January 2003 target, but isn't yet setting a new target.

First target: Late 2001
Second target: December 2002
Third target: January 2003
Fourth target: ?

Transbay Tube: Train operator announces that they're having problems with the "track antennas" in the tube, which is why we keep stopping.

Embarcadero: Street escalator is still out of service and cordoned off.

Well, it's a brand new year; maybe BART is preparing to go on a flurry of new faregate installations. How about we try sending another question to BART Customer Service to try to find out?

TO: BART Customer Service
FROM: LWB
SUBJECT: PLEASE REPLY: New Faregates
Hi BART, I'd like to know the schedule for installing the new faregates at each BART station. Particularly interested to know when new gates will be installed at Ashby and if additional gates will be installed (i.e., more than the current 3) to handle passenger loads. Thanks.

Run run run. Pant pant pant. Run run run. Richmond train in 2 minutes. Next one in 17 minutes. Don't want to miss this one. Run run run. Pant pant pant. Wow, I'm out of shape.

Montgomery. Made it, and seem to have a minute to spare. Phew.

The Mercury News says that the BART extension to SFO will open in "a month or two," but the Examiner (whose publisher is a BART Director) says it won't be until March. Sigh. More delays.

Greetings friends. It's a new year, and things start off pretty well for BART. Ashby parking lot is practically empty (must be a lot of people taking the whole week off), BART has taped announcements about the fare increase to each faregate, train comes on time, I get a seat. Not bad.

A little less good at Embarcadero. No new faregates, no notice about the new fare increase, and the street escalator is out of service and cordoned off.