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A young Kevin Franklin with his mother and grandparents. Photos courtesy of Kevin Franklin.

Update, 10.02.23: Kevin Franklin was appointed as Chief of Police in October 2023.

For almost-three-year-old Kevin Franklin, riding BART for the first time was something of a wonder. The trains were big, shiny, and fast. The stations, grandiose and cathedral-like. And the people watching, unparalleled.

Franklin was one of the lucky Bay Area residents to ride BART the day it all began. He and his family attended opening day of the regional transit system on Sept. 11, 1972, taking the train from Lake Merritt Station to Fremont Station and back. Though the ride took just about an hour, it left a lasting impression on Franklin, who now serves as Deputy Chief of Police for the BART Police Department (BPD). Franklin joined BPD in 1996.

“BART was something that made a kid feel like they could go anywhere,” he said, speaking from his office near Lake Merritt Station. “It was like BART connected me to all these places to go that were so much fun.”

In one photograph from the day – the opening of BART was something you’d be sure to bring a camera to – a bite-sized Franklin can be seen holding his mother’s hand on the platform, smiling as his grandparents look on. In another black-and-white image, Franklin peers into the Train Operator’s cab, his tiny hands on the glass.

For Franklin, it’s a point of pride to have ridden BART on its first day out of the gate. He said it makes him feel “nostalgic and connected” to a transit system he’s used almost his entire life.

“I see so many things that are still the same,” he said, noting a church in the background of a photo that’s still standing and a parking lot that hasn’t been razed. “I’m connected to it in a lot of ways.”

Of course, not everything has stayed the same. Exhibit A: a man smoking a corncob pipe in the background of the above photo.

A young Franklin peers inside the Train Operator cab.

Growing up in Oakland, Franklin remembers how BART seemed to “open up the Bay Area.”

“We could go anywhere,” he said. “I remember riding down to Fremont, and it felt like it was almost a foreign country because it was so far away. But you could get there on BART.” Often, he’d hop on BART “just to go someplace,” with no destination in mind.

Franklin’s grandparents on BART.

Though he doesn’t clearly recall BART’s 1972 opening day, he does remember many opening days thereafter – especially the first day San Francisco International Airport Station went into service, in 2003.

“We were standing on the platform when the very first train arrived carrying the travelers heading off to their destinations around the world,” Franklin said. He could feel a twinge of recognition with those bleary-eyed travelers, taking BART to a location where once there was no BART. Franklin even had a hand in planning the station and its safety features.

Franklin has also seen BART evolve and change profoundly. He saw ridership explode in the 90s onwards, parking lots become multistoried garages, and stations that started as ideas open to the public.

“It felt like the expansion of BART really changed what a police officer had to do,” he said. “It was a lot simpler in the 80s, when there were fewer passengers, facilities, and stations. The 90s were that period where things really started to grow.”

Franklin rose in the ranks at BPD, starting as a police officer. In 2007, he was promoted to Lieutenant, and in 2020, became Deputy Chief.

One of the most profound changes Franklin experienced in his tenure as a police officer came after the tragic shooting death of Oscar Grant by a BPD officer.

“That was a world-changing event for us and for the community,” he said. “We went through that and had a lot of pain, and a lot of change came out of that.”

In the aftermath of the tragedy, BPD showed its “willingness to innovate,” Franklin said. “This was a situation where we had an opportunity to grow and change. So, we did, in training, hiring, supervision – nearly every facet of the department.”

A young Franklin with his mom and grandparents.

In 2021, BPD formally established its Progressive Policing Bureau, which seeks to deploy unarmed civilians in situations where an armed police officer may not be appropriate, such as mental health crises.  

“The ultimate success of the bureau will be determined by the results we get in the coming years,” Franklin said. “We’re getting a lot of positive feedback. People want to see us responding.”

There’s a reason the word “public” is wedged into “public transportation” – the stations and trains are welcome to all who pay their fare. That can sometimes pose problems for policing, as the issues present on the Bay Area’s streets are also visible in BART stations.

“We’re not going to arrest our way out of that,” Franklin said. “The root causes are mental health and economic issues.”

Kevin Franklin with his parents (right) and son (left) at Lake Merritt Station on BART’s 50th anniversary.

Nonetheless, BART’s Progressive Policing Bureau is a step in the right direction, Franklin said.

“What have we done and accomplished in 26 years?” he pondered. “The growth is great. But implementing a crisis intervention team is groundbreaking.”

While BART has changed profoundly in its 50 years, so has Franklin. But that sense of wonder a young boy felt riding BART remains to this day. Still, Franklin can recall that majestic feeling of seeing the Port of Oakland cranes creep along the shoreline, only to enter the darkness of the Transbay Tube, then emerge in downtown San Francisco, dwarfed by skyscrapers.

“I just remember feeling so small,” he said.

For more information about BPD, visit bart.gov/about/police.

BPD is hiring. Learn more about the department on bart.gov/about/police and explore employment opportunities at bart.gov/about/police/employment. The department is offering a $15,000 hiring bonus for laterals and academy graduates.

Will Smith with BART employees on-set of “The Pursuit of Happyness” in 2005.

There’s an early scene in 2006 hit film “The Pursuit of Happyness” in which Chris Gardner, played by Will Smith, races to catch a BART train with the bone density scanner he’s hawking. Gardner makes it on the train, but the doors slam shut on his hand that holds his prized scanner.

The scene speaks to a hidden army of BART employees buzzing behind-the-scenes because of how difficult it was to get the doors to close at the precise moment and to have the train move when the doors were blocked from closing, which won’t typically happen. Everyone was dedicated to ensuring the director’s vision – and Gardner’s inspiring story – made it to the silver screen.

Based on the true life story of Gardner, a salesman struggling to raise his son (played by Smith’s real-life progeny Jaden Smith) and make ends meet in San Francisco, “The Pursuit of Happyness” pays proper homage to its Bay Area setting. BART serves as both a setting and character – an active backdrop that invigorates the heart-wrenching drama.  

Filming with a green screen at Hayward Maintenance Complex.

The “Pursuit of Happyness” crew shot on BART property for 17 days (the infamous bathroom scene was shot on a soundstage in Alameda), between Oct. 1, 2005 and Nov. 20, 2005. The crew, with ample assistance from a team of BART employees, filmed at 12th St./Oakland, 19th St./Oakland, Powell St., and Balboa Park stations, as well as the Hayward Maintenance Complex.

In addition to commandeering trains for the shoot – with heavy supervision and safety checks by BART staff – the production paid BART to age some of the stations in reverse. BART swapped out contemporary advertisements with those from the early 1980s, changed the system maps, and even brought back old station personnel uniforms.

Advertisements from the 1980s replaced contemporary ads at stations. 

“The astute viewer will notice there are two things in the movie that weren’t around in the 80s,” wrote an External Affairs employee after filming. “First, the seats. The crew was going to replace all the blue seats with brown ones, but we couldn’t find any, unfortunately. Secondly, the #1 Transit System in America logo. The movie was shot right when we received that award, and all of our trains had the #1 logos on them.”

Despite these small inaccuracies, if you look closely at the background in BART scenes, you’ll notice period-correct advertisements, such as those for Perry’s Diner on Union Street, Erlanger beer, and the notorious movie “Blue Lagoon,” released in 1980, one year before the film is set.

Because the production needed daylight, it filmed largely during revenue service hours, meaning real-life passengers would find themselves stepping into a station and back in time to the 1980s.

Jada Pinkett-Smith (third from left), Will Smith (third from right), and Chris Gardner (second from right).

“We basically had to work around revenue service,” said BART principal engineer Otto Gonzalez, then a senior construction engineer in Transit System Development (now called Planning and Development). “People would try to get on the filming train, and we’d have to say, ‘No, no, this is not a revenue train.’ You had to keep it on the ball.”

Gonzalez remembers “super long” shoot days, sometimes lasting up to 16 hours, and actively trying not to “ogle” the celebrities – including Tom Cruise and a pregnant Katie Holmes, who visited set during a shoot at the Hayward Maintenance Yard.

Now retired, former train operator and test track operator Greg Gomes was one of the lucky people who not only got to meet Cruise, but snap a coveted photo with him.

“I’m six-foot-two, and Tom’s not a very tall guy. He stood up on the curb and told me where to stand,” Gomes said. “I was kind of laughing. He even asked me to crouch down a bit.”

Tom Cruise with BART employees, including Greg Gomes (far right), at Hayward Maintenance Yard.

Gomes, who operated the trains in some scenes, made a buddy on set: the then pint-sized Jaden Smith, who, like any little boy, loved the trains.

“What a kid,” Gomes said. “I really enjoyed hanging with him. Sometimes, he’d just walk the whole train with me. He kept saying, ‘This is a long walk.’ He was very interested in the electronics, what we see out of the front of the train.”

But like any young actor, Jaden Smith sometimes fumbled his lines.

A young Jaden Smith holding the keys to a BART train in the cab.

“I can’t tell you how many times they stopped filming because he forgot his lines,” Gomes said. “Or the cue cards were wrong. Or somebody tripped over something. Or someone’s in the shot. You could see the director getting visibly mad.”

As for the scene where Will Smith’s hand gets stuck in the door – that was highly, highly choreographed with BART’s help, Gonzalez said.

“It wasn’t as easy as it sounded. A lot of time, these guys were asking things that were just really demanding,” he said. “We had to do things we normally didn’t do, but we always did it in a safe manner.”

BART engineer Otto Gonzalez (right) with Chris Gardner (left).

It wasn’t a given that BART would get involved with “The Pursuit of Happyness” at all. According to Lynette Sweet, former BART Board member and Board President at the time of the film production, “The movie was pitched to BART, and BART said no.”

“What ended up happening was Gavin Newsom (Mayor of San Francisco at the time) called me, and he said, ‘What’s going on at BART? Why won’t they make this movie,” Sweet said. “I said, ‘Stop, Gavin. I’ll call you back tomorrow. There was no way we were passing on Will Smith.”

Sweet said convincing BART to get onboard “was a matter of getting to the right people.”

“It took a lot of involvement from BART,” she said. “So, my pitch was: We gotta do this. It’s Will Smith! And the mayor has asked us how to get it done.”

BART’s involvement felt especially essential, Sweet said, because the transit system once provided Gardner and his young son with safe refuge. Gardner, whose book “The Pursuit of Happyness” provides the basis for the film, slept with his child – on multiple occasions – in the bathroom at MacArthur Station. BART trains took him to job interviews.

Sweet remembers most vividly a “birthday gift” she got from Will Smith.

“I got a peck on the cheek from Will Smith!” she said, before reflecting on the film’s impact more generally on the organization. “That movie really united us,” she said. “It was a positive moment for the agency after tough contract negotiations in 2005. And it reminded us what we were about: serving the Bay Area.”

Months later, after post-production, Warner Bros. hosted a screening for BART employees before the film’s official release.

“I did like the movie,” Gonzalez said. “Being a part of it was a lot of fun – for the most part.”

Thirty years ago, on BART’s twentieth anniversary, we buried a time capsule deep in the ground at Lake Merritt Station and Plaza in Oakland.

Until recently, only BART employees from three decades ago knew what lay inside. But, on the occasion of our 50th anniversary, BART recently pulled the time capsule from the earth and peered inside.

The silver metal container stands about two-feet-high. When we unburied it, we discovered inside 60 items. The contents include objects acquired from the inception of BART onwards, with plenty of 20th anniversary merch. There was dirt from the Market St. Subway groundbreaking in 1967. There was a survey marker from BART’s construction. And, befitting the 90s era, a cassette, VHS, and magnetic tape containing source code for BART’s old Computer Automatic Block System.

Some train equipment made it in the capsule, wedged among t-shirts and labor agreements, business cards and employee signatures. Among the equipment was a circuit board, a thyristor that controls motor current, and Automatic Fare Collection equipment that made the fare gates and ticket machines work.

In all, the time capsule reminds us of not just BART’s history, but the history of the Bay Area at-large. It transports us back in time – to an age of Tamagotchi and Nirvana – and helps us look toward the future. BART is, after all, burying a time capsule to be opened in 25 years, on our 75th anniversary. On Saturday, Sept. 10, public officials took to the stage at Lake Merritt Station and Plaza to deposit items in this new time capsule. The additions included a Clipper card, Fleet of the Future socks, a Not One More Girl poster, a BART 50th t-shirt, a resolution from 1992, a personal handstrap, a 2022 BART Pride sticker, a BART pandemic mask, some of the best tweets from the BART Twitter account, and a 50th anniversary pin given to employees for the occasion. 

Look through the above slideshow for some highlights from the 1992 time capsule and click here for a full catalogue of the items held within.