BART’s tireless cleanup struggle
On Thursday evening, San Francisco’s Civic Center BART Station was in its usual squalid condition: obviously high people roaming the platforms, drug dealers congregating near the entrance at U.N. Plaza, a man sitting on a stairwell with a scale, weighing marijuana.
By Friday morning at 9, the station was sparkling clean, its tiled corridors empty. But by 11 a.m., it had reverted back to chaos. A woman was shooting up near the exit at Market and Eighth streets. Another sat brandishing a needle outside the fare gates as a cleaning machine swept around her.
These scenes have become
routine for commuters who use the busy downtown station to get to City Hall, the Main Library or the arts institutions that freckle Mid-Market and the Civic Center. On Wednesday night, KPIX-TV aired footage of a morning walk through the station that showed people injecting drugs or sitting limp and unresponsive in the halls.
It came just a week after BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost sent an email to several of her colleagues, with the subject line “Civic looks amazing.”
“I stopped through on my way to a meeting and it was spotless!” Trost wrote in the email. “I saw two people cleaning. All hallways were clear. ... Simply amazing.”
Trost had toured the station at about 10:30 that morning, right after a janitor ran a floorbuffing machine through the station — something that BART does every half hour at Civic Center.
It’s part of a cleanup effort that began last year, when the agency set aside money for four new janitors and four community service officers to patrol Powell and Civic Center stations. Additionally, the transit agency hired 21 new cleaners, most of them targeted at downtown San Francisco stations.
But the transit system is playing a cat-andmouse game as it struggles to keep the floors clean and remove hard drug users, only to see them return hours later.
“This is not a crisis that a transit agency can solve alone,” said Nick Josefowitz, one of San Francisco’s three BART directors. “We need the Public Health Department, the Police Department, the sheriff, the social service agencies.”
What’s frustrating, Trost said, “is that we can make it look beautiful and clean, and then the next day the hallway is full again. And then we just do another sweep.”
BART’s next budget proposal includes $1.6 million for elevator attendants, homeless outreach teams, restrooms at four downtown stations and heightened security to discourage encampments on BART properties.
Roughly 23,000 people come through the Civic Center fare gates each day, a number that’s remained steady since 2016. Those who ride in the early mornings encounter the most transients, according to the agency’s monthly counts. On Jan. 9 — the most recent date for which data are available — BART officials counted 79 homeless people in the four downtown stations between 5 and 7 a.m., and 40 in the afternoon and evening, for a total of 159 that day.
While homeless people generated 534 complaints on BART last year, riders who spoke with The Chronicle this week were generally more appalled by drug use in the stations, which has become increasingly blatant, especially at Civic Center.
“Last time we were here we saw someone shooting up,” said Jackie McBride, who rode BART from Livermore with a group of friends on Thursday to attend the San Francisco Symphony.
She noted that on that particular afternoon — the day after the KPIX segment was broadcast — the station looked better than usual. Minutes earlier, two police officers had strolled through the concourse, shooing out loiterers.
The increased scrutiny by BART comes as the city steps up efforts to clean up Civic Center and U.N. Plaza. Last year, former Mayor Ed Lee and City Administrator Naomi Kelly began a pilot program to crack down on drug trafficking, add street sweepers and bring services to homeless people hanging out in the area. As part of that effort, the city closed off the BART entrance near the Burger King at Market and Hyde streets, which had been a magnet for illegal activity.
Trost said that drug trafficking, like filth, is a never-ending cycle for BART. Dealers ride in from Alameda and Contra Costa counties, she said, and as soon as the police arrest them, someone else takes their place.
“The issue is that we could send seven officers to stand at U.N. Plaza or the Eighth and Market street exits, and seven of them would make an arrest — and then seven more dealers would come in,” Trost said, speaking on behalf of BART police. “And they don’t stay in the criminal justice system that long.”
BART is tackling the problem by trying to cut off demand, instead of supply. In October, it joined San Francisco’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program — known as LEAD — a partnership among several nonprofits and city agencies that directs low-level drug offenders into services, instead of throwing them in jail.
At the same time, BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas has reshuffled officers within the system, putting more foot patrols at Civic Center and the two Mission Street stations.
Even so, drug sales persist at the Civic Center exits, and people injecting drugs is a common sight in the stairwells and subterranean corridors.
On Friday morning, dealers were selling bags of pills at the top of the BART stairwell on Eighth and Market. Another group typically lingers at the top of the escalator in U.N. Plaza, where injection drug use is more rampant. Several people were shooting up along the Market Street side of the entrance on Friday.
Last week, a station agent chided a man for apparently free-basing crack cocaine on the Civic Center Station platform, right before he boarded a train. Then on Thursday afternoon, a man snorted white powder from a rail atop the escalator at U.N. Plaza, leaving a trail of residue behind.
Riders say they have become numb to the sight of hard drug use, or people slumped over in obvious despair.
“It’s just normalcy,” said Nora Spalholz, who was climbing the stairs to U.N. Plaza on Thursday afternoon. She commutes to Civic Center twice a week from Pacifica.
Another rider, Chris Nicholson, said BART’s sober patrons have formed a silent “truce” with the drug users and dealers that they encounter at Civic Center Station each day and who seem to always elude the police.
“They are pretty successful at not being where the cops are,” Nicholson said.