“Service Alert: BART is recovering from an earlier problem. There is a 20-minute delay system wide due to an earlier medical emergency at Embarcadero.”
That’s what BART’s website said after the train I was on abruptly stopped between the San Leandro and Coliseum stations. We went nowhere for—not “20 minutes” but for about 45 minutes, and were never told exactly what the problem was. Or maybe we were: there was an occasional broadcast, but the speaker system in the car I was in was hopeless. A mangled moosh of static and crackle, with maybe one in every ten words audible.
So we sat there, as so many BART passengers do on a near-daily basis, and wondered when, if ever, we’d get going again. Fortunately, we eventually did, although it was with fits and starts: cruise slowly for a few hundred feet, then grind again to a halt. As I recalled all the BART delays in recent months, due to equipment failures, or medical emergencies, or police actions, or whatever, I grew increasingly irritated that BART is asking us taxpayers for a bailout, when they can’t even manage to make their speakers work.
The “medical emergency” that day, as near as I can figure it out, is that a dog had escaped from a BART car and gotten lost in the tunnel. (I called BART police for a fuller explanation and was told they couldn’t release details due to “privacy concerns.”) Now, I will defer to no one in my love of dogs. I lost Gus a few years ago and still haven’t recovered. But to shut the entire system down because of a dog? And then claim it’s a medical emergency?
Granted there are medical emergencies on BART. Drugged-out crazies throw hysterical fits. People have heart attacks. Others are assaulted by gate-hoppers who continue to cheat their way onto BART despite the new plastic doors. But to shut the entire system down because someone is throwing a fit? I don’t think that’s right. It’s like the occasional suicidal person who threatens to jump from the Bay Bridge. Is that worth closing the bridge and punishing hundreds of thousands of people? No. I say, give the cops a few minutes to bargain with the jumper, and if he refuses to yield, let him jump.
So when the dog was running through the tunnel, BART should have continued service. If someone is acting out on a car, let BART cops invade that car at the next station and haul the shmuck’s ass out onto the platform and arrest him. If there’s a true medical emergency on the platform, don’t stop all traffic: let the cars continue to run and deal with the incident.
BART’s first responsibility is to keep the trains running, period, full stop. There can be no excuses. If the poor little dog gets run over by the train, tough. That dog shouldn’t have been onboard in the first place. The person who brought it onboard, without a leash, should be charged with whatever misdemeanor offenses are appropriate.
Have a great weekend! Back Monday.
Steve Heimoff