Balboa Park Station is a Bay Area Rapid Transit station located south of Balboa Park in southern San Francisco, California. It consists of two main tracks and a single island platform. Interstate 280 runs along the west side of the station, and City College of San Francisco is to the north.
Balboa Park is currently the busiest BART station outside downtown San Francisco, with seven San Francisco Muni bus lines and three Muni Metro lines connecting in the vicinity. In addition, the station is popular with passengers who kiss and ride, due to its proximity to Interstate 280, a major commuter route into San Francisco. The station is the southernmost in the BART system that passengers can access using an SF Muni FastPass (which is valid for travel only within San Francisco); the next southbound stop, Daly City Station, is just outside San Francisco, across the San Mateo County border in suburban Daly City.
Balboa Park serves as an official transfer station in the BART system. Although all four BART lines that pass through the station currently continue southward to Daly City, the Balboa Park Station design offers southbound passengers transfers between trains without having to change platforms (the Daly City Station has an island platform and a side platform; southbound lines terminating at Daly City use the former, while those trains continuing on to Colma primarily use the latter). The Balboa Park Station also serves as a major intermodal hub by its multiple local transit connections.
Service at this station began on November 3, 1973.
In 2011 a new entrance was opened on the north side of the station to facilitate access to San Francisco City College. The new entrance replaces cumbersome pedestrian routes along steep hills, back allies, and Muni train tracks with a tight clearance against a wall, all to use the original south side entrance. The entrance is a rampway from Ocean Avenue however there is no station agent at this end but an intercom and sliding gate was installed for contacting him or her.
Ever since Colma opened in 1996, Balboa Park became an official transfer station.
Read more about Balboa Park Station: Architecture
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