The (orange) gates will be closing for BART scofflaws
Agency approves change from wedge-shaped design to swinging doors
OAKLAND » The wedge-shaped orange gates that have been a fixture of BART since the system opened will be replaced with sleek swinging doors over the next several years as part of the agency’s plan to cut down on fare evasion.
The BART Board of Directors on Thursday approved a plan to overhaul the design of the gates, which officials say are too easy to jump over or push through, contributing to a fare evasion problem that the agency has moved more urgently to combat in recent years.
Agency staff members spent months studying ways to make the fare gates harder to sneak through and concluded that the best option was a new design that will be familiar to many Bay Area commuters: Gates that swing open like French doors when customers pay their fare, much like those already used in the Muni subway.
BART’s vision is for clear plastic gates, rather than Muni’s black rubber however, and they would more closely resemble gates used by public transit systems in Atlanta, Philadelphia and the New Jersey areas.
The BART board unanimously
supported the “swing-style” gate design, which agency staff say moves passengers through just as quickly as the existing orange gates and should be just as reliable while preventing people from jumping over the barrier or pushing their way through. BART staffers warned that the design wouldn’t prevent another common method people use to dodge fares: “Tailgating” closely behind a paying customer to sneak two people through with one ticket or a Clipper card swipe.
“It would be a really positive change; I think our customers would really welcome it,” said Tamar Allen, BART’s assistant general manager for operations.
A BART spokeswoman said the swinging gates can be installed in the next six months, though only at the wider wheelchair-accessible entrances to the Richmond station.
It will be a lot longer before the new gates will be in place systemwide; four years in a best- case scenario, according to agency officials. Replacing all the fare gates in the system would cost an estimated $150 million, which BART has not budgeted.
Vice President Rebecca Saltzman said the agency is “going to have make some difficult decisions” about how to prioritize money for the new gates.
About 5% of BART passengers ride without paying, according to research presented to the board Thursday. BART estimates that fare evasion costs the agency, which relies on fares for three- quarters of its operating revenue, an estimated $19 million to $25 million in lost revenue each year.
Rider surveys show large majorities of passengers say they want BART to crack down on fare evasion with many believing it contributes to a sense of lawlessness in stations and on trains that makes people feel unsafe or uncomfortable.
“Controlling fare evasion is a critical step to improving the environment on BART and making paying riders a lot more satisfied with the transit service,” said Director Debora Allen, who has called for the agency to stiffen fare evasion penalties. “We must address the things that make people give up on riding BART.”
BART has updated some aspects of its fare gates over the years, but the wedge design has been basically unchanged since the system opened in 1972. The agency has tried several tactics to make fare evasion tougher while keeping the original design but ultimately concluded a complete overhaul was needed.
In one effort, BART increased the pressure that keeps the gates shut, making them harder to force open, and said fare evasion dropped by anywhere from 16 to 38 percent at the eight stations where the strategy was used, though it overlapped with other prevention efforts. Riders could still jump over the gates, however.
Two more visible strategies, which prompted criticism and some ridicule on social media, were deemed impractical.
At the Richmond station, BART tried stacking a second level of wedge gates on top of the first to make it harder to jump the barrier. Officials said the design cut down on fare evasion and will stay in place at Richmond but warned that it won’t work for more heavily-trafficked stations. Many riders gave the gates positive reviews in BART’s survey, but Director Janice Li said she has heard from passengers who found the design intimidating and she said she hopes staff reconsider the plan to keep the stacked gates in use.
“BART should not be promoting and allowing hostile design that makes our system scary or unwelcoming,” Li said.
At the Fruitvale station, pop-up barriers on top of the gates — mocked as “inverted guillotines” by critics — also proved effective at reducing fare evasion, according to BART, but were removed earlier this month because they were too easily damaged, making them expensive to maintain.
In their search for a better design, BART officials rejected two other concepts: A retractable gate design and f loorto- cei ling turn- styles, such as the tall, revolving gates of interlocking metal seen in parts of New York’s subway system. The agency’s staf f warned the retractable design could be less reliable and more costly to maintain. And the revolving turnstiles, which one director derided Thursday as an “Iron Maiden” design, can’t move passengers through as quickly as the current gates and would present problems for people with bicycles or passengers in wheelchairs.
“We don’t want to take a step back with reliability,” Allen said, adding that the ability to get at least 30 passengers through the gates per minute is “critical.”