Warriors parade crowd boosts BART ridership

BART recorded its highest ridership since March 2020 as massive crowds descended on the rail system Monday to celebrate the Warriors championship parade in San Francisco.

More than 190,500 people rode BART on Monday, according to the agency. That figure was about 46% of BART’s preCOVID weekday ridership and shattered the regional rail agency’s previous pandemic high by roughly 40,000 riders.

But the ridership figure was an undercount because many riders who didn’t have Clipper cards went uncounted, the agency said. After long lines at BART stops began forming, BART staff began letting “folks in so they wouldn’t miss the parade,” BART tweeted.

For a day, at least, BART looked like its pre-pandemic self.

By 9:30 a.m., hundreds of people were waiting in line outside BART’s Dublin station to purchase a Clipper card. Across the system, station platforms brimmed with riders trying to board the next San Franciscobound train. For much of the day, BART trains crossing the Transbay Tube were standingroom only.

By the start of championship parade shortly after 11:20 a.m., some BART trains briefly quit stopping at some of its Market Street stations because the sidewalks above those stations could no longer fit more people.

BART’s previous pandemic ridership record came on April 27, when the transit agency carried over 152,000 people. The pre-pandemic ridership record stands at 568,061 riders on Halloween 2012.

While Monday’s marked a pandemic ridership record for BART, the agency is still seeing far fewer riders than it did before the onset of COVID-19 and its attendant stay-home mandates.

Normal ridership on a regular weekday before the pandemic was around 400,000 people, BART said. The Chronicle reported in March that projections at the time put BART on track to recover 70% of it’s pre-pandemic ridership by 2032.

A recent ridership report from BART said just over

3.5 million people rode BART in May, an increase of almost 200,000 people from April but still just 36% of pre-COVID expectations.