Idiots Write About Sports

From the Things That Probably Bug Only Me Dept.:

Went to the Big Game over the weekend. It was an enjoyable outing — festive atmosphere, beautiful day, the good guys won. Sure, things got a little chippy at the end, thanks to some classless play on the part of Stanford — Leigh Torrence, in particular, should be ashamed of himself — which probably sealed Buddy Teevens’ fate. (Lose with dignity, Buddy.) All that remains now is to figure out which bowl game will host Cal in the next month or so, otherwise known as The Great Screwing of Aught-Four courtesy of your friends at the BCS.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. No, I want to talk to you today about mass transit.

I took BART to the Big Game, as I suspect most Cal fans from the East Bay and the City do. I mean, I’m sure some people from parts East and West drive themselves to Memorial Stadium, but these are probably mega-billionaires with money to burn on fancy parking permits and well-compensated chauffeurs with the skills to navigate the oft-crowded streets of Berkeley. Me, I just take the train. It’s less of a hassle.

Or at least, it should be. On this particular Saturday, owing to a series of circumstances you likely don’t care about, I arrived at the Ashby Street station on the Berkeley-Oakland border to wait for a Richmond-bound train. The first one to arrive: a four-car train so stuffed with humanity, I thought I had wandered on to the set of Ghandi.

Now, admittedly, the Ashby station is just one stop away from where you disembark for Cal games, so chances are that any train passing through is going to be packed from fore to aft. But a four-car train? On a day when both Cal and Stanford fans are descending upon Berkeley? And when you could just as easily send a nine- or 10-car train to deal with the extra passengers who are likely riding BART to the game in no small part thanks to the ads encouraging them to do so? What the hell are they thinking at BART?

I was unable to force my way onto the four-car train incidentally. Instead, I caught the nine-car train that followed. It was still crowded — probably full of people who couldn’t fit on the four-car train — but I still managed to find myself a space.

(Secondary rant: why is it, on particularly crowded trains, that people feel the need to bunch up around the doorway instead of spreading out to the back of the train to let others board more easily? We’re all headed to the same station, folks. You would think that alumni from Cal and Stanford — two schools not known for housing dullards — might be familiar with certain immutable laws of physics regarding two bodies occupying the same space at the same time.)

This is really not a complicated concept. There are a set number of Cal home games every year, with the dates fixed well in advance. You know that, owing to a lack of parking around Memorial Stadium, a lot of people will be looking for alternative means of transit to and from the game. You also know that passenger volume will be on the high side beginning about two hours before kickoff, and that three-and-a-half to four hours after the game starts, those same people are going to want to return to their homes and villages.

So why not make sure you have ample trains running on those days and at those times? Is there some variable I’m missing?

I guess I should be thankful that Saturday’s Big Game started at 12:30. Had it started any later — say, a 3 p.m. kickoff — the game would have finished after 6 p.m. And that’s the time on Saturdays that BART stops running direct trains from Richmond to San Francisco — meaning San Francisco-bound passengers attending late-ending Cal games have to cram themselves on the same trains as East Bay-bound passengers and transfer to a different train several stops later.

This has happened to me on more than one occasion. Do I need to mention that BART expected all of us to wedge ourselves onto four-car trains?

There is a reason beyond my own comfort and sanity that I humbly suggest BART get its act together. Taking the train to Cal games is likely the first exposure many of these passengers have to BART. Because the experience is so unpleasant and disorganized, it will likely wind up being the last. And if we’re ever going to encourage people to embrace the ease and convenience of public transit, maybe the first thing we need to do is make sure that it’s easy and convenient.

Post a comment