Earlier this year when BART announced that they would be facing a budget deficit of over three hundred million dollars, Bay Area teenagers knew there could be changes that would directly impact them, tbh wanted to explore this issue.
Click the play button above to listen to the story
STORY TRANSCRIPT:
Sound of train moving
MARC CHANG: We're currently on the Caltrain. We just left Redwood City. We're going north, and we're about to get to San Carlos.
REPORTER: I’m following Marc Chang along his daily commute. Like me, he’s a teenager who relies on public transportation to get around.
CHANG: I'm in my rowing gear, so I'm just gonna put my pants on.
REPORTER: He’s decked out in spandex. Wearing a big backpack and carrying his bike. We have two more connections before getting to the Pacific Rowing Club in San Francisco.
CHANG: Connections are unfortunately just a part of using transit. You're very lucky if you don't have to make them.
REPORTER: We’re gonna be on Caltrain for half an hour before we get to the next leg of Marc’s journey.
CHANG: We're headed to San Bruno to go transfer to BART, one of the endangered stations.
REPORTER: This commute is already long—but BART’s financial problems could make it even longer. Almost double the time.
CHANG: Your commute dictates a lot of your life.
REPORTER: San Bruno isn’t the only station at risk. Sounds dramatic, but media outlets are calling it “The Doomsday Plan.”
NEWS CLIP: The doomsday plan includes closing these ten stations with the lowest ridership.
NEWS CLIP: So-called Doomsday plan is making a lot of commuters nervous.
REPORTER: Why are these cuts even being considered in the first place? Essentially, BART is running out of money.
ZACK DEUTSCH-GROSS: It really cratered during the pandemic where everything changed, right? So not only, um, were people working from home, but there was a lot of fear of being outside, being, um, being exposed to, to COVID.
REPORTER: That’s Zack Deutsch-Gross. He’s the executive director of Transform CA, an organization that advocates for affordable housing and transportation.
DEUTSCH-GROSS: Transit is recovering. We're at, you know, a little over sixty-five, close to seventy percent pre-pandemic recovery, ridership in the Bay Area. Um, but it's not where it should be.
REPORTER: There’s a measure on the ballot in November. Depending on the county, it would add up to 1% sales tax. Which would raise almost a billion dollars a year for public transit.
And if it doesn't pass, the first phase of “the doomsday plan” will cut lines and trains, increasing wait times by fifty percent. And no trains past 9 pm.
PAYAM RAZAWI: I'd lose a lot of access to activities that I go to, such as concerts.
REPORTER: That’s Payam Razawi. Like me, he’s 15 and these cuts would make getting home from a concert almost impossible…
PAYAM RAZAWI: I’d pretty much have no way to get back unless I'd spend, like, about 80 bucks for an Uber.
REPORTER: That’s a lot of money. He says his mom could drive him but…
PAYAM RAZAWI: I'd rather not bother them with the burden of having to be responsible for my transportation.
FAHIMA RAZAWI: Hello, my name is Fahima RazawiI am Payam’s mom.
REPORTER: His mom is a single parent and works a full-time job.
FAHIMA RAZAWI: I work very early in the morning, so I have to leave home before most people are awake.
REPORTER: She says she doesn’t mind driving Payam.
FAHIMA RAZAWI: It would just get difficult at a certain point.
REPORTER: And teen Eva Agrell says…
EVA AGRELL: I think there's a lot of teenagers that use BART because it's a necessity. Not everyone has a person to drive them everywhere, and I've taken BART to get to work and school because my parents couldn't take me.
REPORTER: Another teen, Bean Chandra, from Oakland says losing access to BART would mean less independence.
BEAN CHANDRA: I love BART. It's so helpful and easily accessible and gives me a lot more independence.
REPORTER: But it could also mean less art and music.
CHANDRA: I’m very much a part of the local music scene, and it would be really hard for me to get to the venues and places I need to go.
CHANDRA: I know a lot of people don't live immediately around those venues. And so that community would kind of fall apart.
REPORTER: And when I look at the community around me now, I feel so much unnecessary disconnection. Bean worries that cuts to BART would only isolate us more. Creating a kind of chasm that would be difficult to fix.
Zack Deutsch-Gross warns that If the measure doesn’t pass, BART will have to make even more cuts, leading to what he calls the “Transit Death Spiral.”
DEUTSCH-GROSS: Where service cuts mean less people riding.
REPORTER: Less ridership means…
DEUTSCH-GROSS: Even less revenue which means agencies are forced to make more cuts.
REPORTER: This could damage the Bay Area’s transit culture in a way that could be hard to reverse.
REPORTER: Let's imagine a world where BART doesn't exist. How do you think your life would be different and how do you feel when you think about that?
CHANDRA: Like it stopped existing or it just never existed in the first place?
REPORTER: Like it just doesn’t exist. Like it’s just gone.
CHANDRA: That would be horrible. My parents would be so annoyed at me driving me places all the time. It would be so difficult to have friends that don't live in, like, a 10-block radius of you, 'cause you can't walk to them.
AGRELL: And not having BART would make life so much more complicated and probably stressful for the kids and adults that use BART in their everyday lives.
PAYAM RAZAWI: I can't really imagine a world without BART because it's just been such an impact on my life, but if I had to, I’d imagine a pretty backed up city with lots of traffic.
Sound of honking
REPORTER: BART estimates bridge traffic could increase by 73 percent if everyone switched to driving.
And the road rage? Just think about trying to get to a Giants or a Valkyries game across the Bay.
Sound of Marc at the rowing club
CHANG: We have reached the destination.
REPORTER: Finally, Marc and I arrive at the rowing club. It’s taken us an hour and a half to get here.
REPORTER: Usually it takes Marc 50 minutes to get to rowing practice.
CHANG: Should we get an oar? I’m going to get an oar.
REPORTER: Under these potential cuts, it could take him two hours. But for Marc, it isn’t just about saving time. BART does more than that.
CHANG: And especially since it's now so ingrained into youth culture like the fact that the default option for everybody in San Francisco is just, "Oh, let's just get on the bus," it's a great thing, and it builds lifelong transit riders as they grow up who are, you know, more connected and more conscious of their community like the area surrounding them.
REPORTER: Bean says it opens up our world, exposing us to new places, people, and ideas.
CHANDRA: I feel like Oakland and Berkeley have such a rich community, like food and culture and art, I wouldn't get to see anything new. I wouldn't be able to learn anything new.
REPORTER: Is public transportation important to you, and if so, why?
CHANDRA: It is very important to me. I love the bus. I love Muni. I love BART. And it's important to me because I care about my community.
REPORTER: Ultimately, transit is a shared, communal resource that allows us to become our full authentic selves. We all depend on BART, and this November, BART depends on us.
REPORTER: In San Francisco, I’m Lukas Smith, for tbh.