History of The Bay Area Rapid Transit - Operation

Operation

BART began service on September 11, 1972, reporting more than 100,000 passengers in its first five days. The Market Street Subway opened in 1973 and the Transbay Tube finally opened on September 16, 1974, linking the four branches to Daly City, Concord, Richmond, and Fremont. Service then was still 14 hours a day, and for five years BART operated weekday-only: Saturday trains began November 1977 and Sunday in July 1978. Fare in 1972-74 was $1.20 from Concord or $1.25 from Fremont to any station west of the bay; Richmond to Fremont was $1.10.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake severed the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge for a month and destroyed the Cypress Street Viaduct. With some Bay Area freeways damaged or destroyed, BART trains, within six hours of the earthquake, were again running. Even with service interruptions following aftershocks for inspection of tracks, over- and under-crossings, and tunnels, BART continued to run.

Expansion was made possible by an agreement under which San Mateo County was to contribute $200 million to East Bay extensions as a “buy-in” to the system without actually joining the BART district. Trains to North Concord/Martinez began on December 16, 1995 and to Pittsburg/Bay Point on December 7, 1996. Service south of Daly City began on February 24, 1996, to Colma. On May 10, 1997 service began from Bay Fair to Castro Valley and Dublin/Pleasanton. The Dublin/Pleasanton extension now has transbay trains, but it was planned to have just shuttle trains between Dublin/Pleasanton and Bay Fair.

BART has a unionized work force that went on strike for two weeks in 1976 in solidarity with the BART Police Officers Association. During the 1970s BART union workers received quarterly cost of living increases. In 1979 there was a 90 day lockout by management, or a strike by union workers, depending on who one believes. Trains ran during this period because one of the unions, AFSCME, was then only an informal association known as BARTSPA, and management and BARTSPA had enough staff to keep trains running. One result of this strike is that the cost-of-living increases were greatly reduced to an amount far below the Consumer Price Index, and such raises are only received if no other raise occurs in a particular year.

For six days in September 1997, a BART strike caused a system-wide shutdown. This resulted in a four-year contract offering a 7% raise, and a one-time payment of $3,000 to all employees in lieu of a raise the first year. Such one-time payments are becoming more common as a way to prevent the effects of compounding on wages and salaries.

Unionized BART employees, particularly professionals, saw their wages and standard of living erode during the Silicon Valley economic boom that drove up real estate prices and salaries in the Bay Area in the 1990s. In addition, BART began large scale layoffs of rank and file workers, increasing the workload on those remaining. In its 2001 negotiations, the BART unions fought for, and won, a 24 percent wage increase over four years with continuing benefits for employees and retirees. Another threatened strike on July 6, 2005 was averted by a last-minute agreement between management and the unions. In this agreement, Union workers received a 7% raise over four years, and paid an increase in the cost of medical insurance. The net increase (3%) is well below the current rate of inflation, which is about 4% per year (or 16 percent over the four-year contract); and also below the average private sector raise, which was 4.6% for 2006.

In October 2004 BART received the American Public Transportation Association's Outstanding Public Transportation System Award for 2004 in the category of transit systems with 30 million or more annual passenger trips. BART issued announcements and began a promotional campaign declaring that it had been named Number One Transit System in America. In 2006 the same industry trade group presented BART with the token AdWheel award for 'creative approaches to marketing transit' in recognition for BART's development of an iPod-based trip planner.