The BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system covers portions of Contra Costa County, essentially all of Alameda County and San Francisco. It doesn’t cover south on the Peninsula much past SFO. There is the underway runnel connects San Francisco with the East Bay. Since the system was developed in the 1970s, maintenance was not exactly factored in. Not sure why but in order to work on the tracks under the Bay, the whole system has to be taken down to uni-directional for that stretch. Admittedly, the weekend is the best time to conduct this sort of work, the ridership is much less than that of weekdays. If people are smart, they will plan to stay on one side or the other.
And then there are those like me who need to get across the Bay, or from Berkeley to the Coliseum which did not involve a train change for Alex & me. However with just one train from our station, it meant that we also had the entire “going to San Francisco” crowd on the train.
We will ignore the As game, Lou Trivino, dropped balls and the Mariner’s four run 8th inning.
The real fun began on the way back. Only one train from Freemont/Dublin etc and going to Richmond. Want to go anywhere else? Change at 12th for SF or MacArthur for Antioch. When we finally were able to get on the ONE train headed across the Bay to SF, it was sardine time again. A change to the N-Judah at Embarcadero saw only minimal improvement. It was also packed. End result was that it took almost 90 min from the Coliseum to UCSF.
And, it took just about as long to get back to Berkeley with N-Judah -> BART with the same only one train going under the Bay -> change at 19th.
When I got home, it was more than time to crash.
