BART runs longer trains for San Francisco/Oakland Women’s Marches
BART is taking steps to prepare for what are expected to be large crowds for the Women’s Marches in downtown Oakland and San Francisco as well as other locations such as Walnut Creek. Last year’s march was our second highest weekend ridership day of all time with 347,322 trips taken (average weekday ridership is 420,000 and an average Saturday is 175,000). Longer trains will be available for riders all day Saturday, January 20th. BART also plans to have a few additional event trains on standby at key locations on Saturday ready to deploy if warranted by the size of the crowds.
Parking is free on weekends. Remember to not leave anything visible in your car.
We are expecting some our busiest stations to include 12th Street and Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland as well as Civic Center and Embarcadero in San Francisco.
Additional employees will be at the ready to assist BART riders during the day of the march. That includes more Station Agents at what are likely to be the busiest stations. We will have extra technicians at the ready at those stations to make sure our ticket machines are working and to respond to any new elevator or escalator outages. Also, additional officers and sergeants from the BART Police Department will be working Saturday to help with crowd control.
Riders also play an important role in preparing for these busy travel days. We strongly encourage everyone to save money and load value on a Clipper® card for their trip. That way, passengers won’t pay the .50 per trip surcharge on paper tickets.
We will have sales tables at some of our busiest stations to supply regular adult fare Clipper cards for $14.00. Youths, Seniors, and People with disabilities should go to clippercard.com and learn how to get a discounted Clipper card. Every BART station now has at least one Clipper vending machine that sells regular adult fare cards.
Also, if you see something suspicious at a station, please tell BART police or a station agent. If you see something, say something.