SAN FRANCISCO—BART will be making changes to its ride schedules towards the end of the year, expanding its late night ride availability. Ridership on the transit service has seen a decline during the pandemic. Riders are expected to return to public transit as the COVID-19 pandemic wanes, said agency officials on Thursday, April 8 per NBC.
From March of 2020, BART faced a 90% ridership drop due to the pandemic. In an attempt to cut costs the agency decided to stop both weekday and weekend train service at 9 p.m. BART’s normal train schedule (pre-pandemic) would normally be 5 a.m. to midnight on weekdays and 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. Currently, the schedule is 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends, with 30-minute gaps between trains during off-peak hours.
Agency officials expect to open agency officials positions and said they expect to resume weekday and Saturday service back to midnight as soon as September of this year. On Thursday, BART officials told the agency’s Board of Directors, that the full service restoration plan would shorten the time between trains from 30 minutes to 15 minutes during non-peak hours until 8 p.m. and change Saturday service hours to 6 a.m. to midnight on all five of the agencies routes.
BART Late Night Services Expanding (REWRITE) was originally published on San Francisco News
