CA: BART's long fight against fare evasion is finally paying off. Here's how much

The revenue gains and time savings stem from a years-long effort to modernize the system and clamp down on rampant fare evasion. Officials at BART spent years trying different tactics to ward off scofflaws, including by sending police to "blitz" some of the high-traffic stations and stop everyone who was caught cheating.

All the while, engineers tested designs for a perfect barrier to protect station areas and platforms from street conditions outside, and effectively force people to pay. After discarding concepts for double-decker and shark fin gates, as well as an "Iron Maiden" model with revolving bars that join like interlocking teeth, the agency found success with the current institutional-looking saloon-door stiles.

Now installed at all 50 stations, these gates are "a symbol of the new BART," General Manager Bob Powers said. But their value is practical as well as aesthetic. Charts presented in advance of Thursday's board of directors workshop show that stations in downtown San Francisco benefited the most from hardened infrastructure.

Comparing the six month period before the "next generation" fare gates debuted, to the six months that followed, Embarcadero station saw a significant reduction in the need for maintenance work — from 112 hours to two hours. Crews who repair equipment at Daly City reaped 109 hours of saved time, while 75 hours were saved at Balboa Park and 57 at 16th and Mission.

Notably, the charts show that some stations no longer need "corrective" maintenance, a term that refers to graffiti, vandalism, extremely heavy clean-ups and other damage that's largely receded from BART, with the advent of taller and more secure fare gates. BART reported no hours of fix-it work in the paid areas of Hayward and Pleasant Hill stations after the new gates were built. Workers spent only half an hour repairing equipment in Daly City, compared to 109 hours during the prior six months.

Such stark results led social media commenters to conclude that it's "fairly easy" to rectify shabby conditions on public transit.

"When you see how dramatically these maintenance requests fell, the numbers tell us that these fare gates are preventing unwanted behavior that impacts the station environment," BART spokesperson Alicia Trost told the Chronicle. "Those people are no longer entering BART."

Trost also highlighted "very clear trends of more people paying for their trips" at stations with new fare gates, an observation buttressed by rising revenue and increased purchases of Clipper cards, including discounted Clipper Start cards for people who may lack the economic means to pay fare.

"We are converting people who were not paying into being paying riders," Trost said.

Powers and other leaders are touting their success at a moment when BART needs every win it can get. Faced with a looming deficit of $400 million a year, BART has warned of an all-out nuclear scenario if voters defeat a sales tax measure to bail the rail agency out in November. Without that economic life raft, BART will undergo a death in three phases, management warn.

Staff at the agency would close ten stations as soon as next January, with another five on the kill list in July. Within two years, BART could activate "Phase 3" a move to shut down service altogether.

At a moment when BART and other transit operators are searching behind every couch cushion for money, they are also finding remarkable strategies to be more nimble and efficient. When BART staff analyzed the rate of ridership growth at individual stations, they found it increased once the new gates were added.

But telling an efficiency story is difficult for a transit operator now turning to the public for funding. Critics have pummelled BART on social media, accusing the agency of failing to reduce managers' salaries or lay off employees in the face of a crisis.

"We have many needs," spokespeople for the agency wrote Sunday in a post on the social media platform X, "and limited sources of funding pots."

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