#sf bart

   For those of you who don't live in the area, BART is the regional light-rail/subway thing for the SF Bay Area. It has a daily ridership of 400,000 during the weekdays. Now, all of those people are taking buses, cars, taxis, ferries, or helicopters (admittedly as a publicity stunt but yes, this is really happening) to get to work/school/whatever. The still functioning transit agency in the city, MUNI, has decided to reduce the number of buses for the 3 busiest bus routes in the city because it's summer and they literally don't have any fucks to give right now. All of the bus stops informs you of this situation by saying "There is no BART service. Expect crowding." They aren't running extra buses to compensate. They are just like "life sucks. What are you gonna do about it, cupcake?" 

When I first heard about BART going on strike, I was unfazed. First of all, I figured they wouldn't actually do it. Even if they did, I don't take BART so how much was it really going to suck for me? I was just like:

  Then, they did go on strike. I began seeing people on facebook planning to stay on one side or the other of the Bay Bridge because they didn't want to deal with traffic the next day, the kind of planning one normally only sees for New Years Eve and other natural disasters. I got the sense that something was fundamentally wrong.

Despite this early bit of foreboding, the first day went better than expected. I woke up a bit early, got on a bus early, and got to work early. As far as I could tell, nothing had really changed for me. I heard about people standing in lines to get across the Bay Bridge and almost getting in fights if someone tried to cut in line, but you know. East Bay People, amirite? 

    I began to feel smug.

  This was a mistake.

Day two, and I definitely began to notice that there were half as many of my morning commute bus on the road.

Normally, as long as I get on a bus before 8:20, it's not all that bad. I don't get a seat all that often, but I can stand pretty much anywhere I want and because the bus gets on the highway it's actually pretty easy to just space out and play with my phone.  

   All of the buses I've taken in the last two days have been late. When they finally arrive, it's like:

 It's a struggle just to get on the fucking bus. There are seven stops after mine, and it only gets more and more crowded.

When we got on the highway today, the entire bus was packed in a two-by-two line of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder. I just felt lucky to be able to get on. There were eight people waiting at the last stop and none of them got on because there just wasn't any space left. I can only imagine how they felt, because the next bus wasn't coming for 20 minutes and was probably going to be as bad or worse.

  I only had to work until two because there was seriously NOTHING to do, so we all just left. By the time I got on a bus to get home, it was about four o'clock. For various reasons that made sense at the time, I was carrying a sewing machine. It took the broken down piece of shit an hour and a half to get me home. It normally would take forty-five minutes.