BARTmobile
Started: 2024-08-04 14:12:47
Submitted: 2024-08-05 20:11:12
Visibility: World-readable
Celebrating BARTmobile's birthday
I've seen the smiling face of BART's anthropomorphic A-car, looking like it was inspired by Thomas the Tank Engine (I like to imagine it's Thomas's grand-nephew), in parades in San Francisco including Chinese New Year and Pride. I got to meet BARTmobile up close at the birthday party BART held for the system's 50th anniversary. This summer BART published a detailed history of the promotional vehicle, and decided to celebrate BARTmobile's 20th birthday with a birthday festival at Orinda Station. (I no longer follow BART on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, but they have an RSS feed for their blog so I get all of the important news there.) So of course I had to go.
To get to Orinda I drove over the mountain to Milpitas, parked at the BART station there, caught an East Bay train bound for Richmond, and made a cross-platform transfer at 19th Street/Oakland. When I stepped off the train in Orinda I spotted the birthday festival in a corner of the parking lot, with a line of people waiting to ride BARTmobile in a loop around the lot.
In case anyone showed up in Orinda without realizing there was a birthday festival in the parking lot, BART set up a birthday cutout in the station lobby with a staff person taking pictures through the window.
BART provided a cupcake truck in the parking lot giving out cupcakes to celebrate the birthday, so I got one then stood in the line for rides on BARTmobile. This ride had become the most exclusive transit ride in the Bay Area. While waiting I signed a waiver acknowledging that this vehicle didn't necessarily have all of the safety features I would expect in a normal vehicle. (It was really just a fiberglass shell around a large golf cart.)
As I approached the front of the line, BARTmobile took a detour into the blocked-off part of the parking lot where the festival was being held so we could sing "Happy Birthday" to the vehicle. It's always a little awkward to sing "Happy Birthday" in any group of people, and this was a large group of people dispersed across the parking lot, but it was a neat gesture.
As I got closer to the front of the line I got a better view of the vehicle as it looped in a circuit around the parking lot. I got a bunch of nearly-identical pictures of it driving past. I did not get a picture of BARTmobile playing its recording of the legacy fleet's regular electric horn, as if it were pulling into a station reminding people to step back from the yellow line at the platform edge. (As far as I know, BARTmobile does not have a recording it can play of Angry BART, the air horn that train drivers blast when someone is dangerously close to the platform edge as the train barrels into the station at speed. I've only heard Angry BART two or three times in the years I've lived in and around the Bay Area.)
The main door on the passenger side was a gull-wing door that opened to proved access to each of the three rows of seats inside, including the driver up front. The underlying vehicle was a large golf cart, with bench seats holding two people each. It wasn't going to win any prizes for comfort or speed, but it was more than enough to show off at parades or other events where it could easily keep up with the walking speed of the rest of its group.
And soon enough my turn came.
I got a seat in the back for the trip around the parking lot, making a tiny loop around a part of Orinda Station. This parking lot was built to hold East Bay commuters driving to BART to ride the train to their office jobs in the Financial District, and it was nowhere near capacity on this cloudy Saturday afternoon. There were a few cars entering and exiting the parking lot, who mostly seemed bemused by the idea of this tiny anthropomorphic BART car driving around in their midst.
And then the ride was over. We pulled back up to the curb and disembarked, having ridden in the most exclusive transit route in the Bay Area.
I dropped by the merch table (I was wearing my old boi/new-boi t-shirt I got at the merch table two years ago) and got a t-shirt depicting an old BART paper ticket. (A month ago I was thumbing through a book on my shelf when suddenly an old BART paper ticket fell out, with a dollar or two printed on the face of the card. I guess it must have been from 2017 when I didn't have my Clipper card and needed a ticket to get home from work one day.)
I left the festival to eat bánh mì in Orinda, then caught BART back to Milpitas before driving the rest of the way home. I got to celebrate mass transit and a quirky bit of BART's marketing.
I took a few more pictures at the BARTmobile party at Photos on 2024-07-27.
