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Midnight BART Service Returns August 2

BART returns to near-regular service starting Monday with 5a-Mid service six days a week and 2x more SFO trains
By - posted 7/31/2021 No Comment

BART returns to near-regular service starting August 2, 2021

BART is ready to serve the region with the return of near-regular service starting Monday, August 2, 2021.

The schedule change includes increased frequencies and extending closing times to midnight Mondays through Saturdays along with a dramatic increase in direct trips to SFO on weekdays.

The new schedule is very similar to the one before the pandemic but with some targeted service expansions but also some areas that will not return to pre-pandemic levels such as the extra commuter trains on the Antioch-SFO (Yellow) line during peak hours. Sunday service will continue to run at 30-minute frequencies and a 9pm closure to accommodate BART’s critical cable replacement project and other infrastructure rebuilding work.

Plan Ahead for Schedule Change

The BART Trip Planner has been updated with the new schedule and riders can start planning their trips using a date of August 2 and beyond. PDF timetables specific to each line have also been posted online.

BART was able to advance the major schedule change 4 weeks early by working collaboratively with our labor partners to accelerate the hiring, training, and shift sign-up process.

The service increase is part of BART’s Welcome Back Plan outlining our efforts to better serve the Bay Area and help people get to work, school, appointments, and fun destinations across the region.

Schedule Change Details

  • Weekday service will be 5am-12am (previously 5am-9pm) with 5-line service and 15-min frequencies on all lines from 5am-8pm and 3-line service with 30-minute frequencies from 8pm-midnight.
  • Saturday service will be 6am-12am (previously 8am-9pm) with 5-line service from 6am-8pm and then 3-line service from 8pm-midnight. Saturday service has been designed to better meet the needs of the majority of our riders. We are starting 5-line service right when we open, giving morning riders more options. Trains will be more evenly distributed to cut down on wait times and improve transfers. While a few sections such as Castro Valley to Dublin/Pleasanton and Pittsburg Center to Antioch are still at 30-minute frequencies, the rest of our system will have four or more trains per hour. For the first time ever, we doubled the service on the Yellow line, providing 15-minute frequencies as far as Pittsburg-Bay Point until about 8pm.
  • Sunday service will remain 8am-9pm with 3-line service and 30-minute frequencies. However, the first trains of the morning begin earlier than before offering trips in the 7am hour.  The Yellow and Blue line trains will continue to run close together, instead of spaced apart, throughout San Francisco on Sundays to accommodate single tracking that will take place on select Sundays. During single tracking, the end of the Dublin-Daly City (Blue) line will now be 24th Street Mission. This is an improvement for downtown San Francisco riders during single tracking because the forced transfer is moving from Montgomery to 24th Street Mission. BART will improve Sunday service in February 2022.
  • More trips to SFO. BART is rolling out a dramatic increase in direct service to SFO going from four trips per hour during peak hours to eight trips per hour, all serving downtown San Francisco and Oakland. BART’s system map has also been updated to eliminate the purple line shuttle between SFO and Millbrae. In March 2021, BART improved service to SFO and Millbrae by eliminating the need to transfer to the shuttle train. The Richmond-Millbrae + SFO (Red) line offers direct service to SFO via Millbrae during 5-line service, and the Yellow line offers direct service to Millbrae via SFO during 3-line service.
  • Long trains will continue to run during all hours for the time being, but at some yet-to-be determined point, BART will begin to make trains shorter during hours of lower ridership to right size the maintenance requirements driven by car operating hours.

Updated BART System Map

In the new system map (attached below), one noticeable change is the elimination of the Purple line connecting SFO Airport and Millbrae as a shuttle. Instead the map has replaced it with a newly configured Red and Yellow line service pattern. This service improvement also eliminates the need to show San Bruno and SFO as a transfer station.

To simplify the map further, the main map covers Mondays – Saturdays until evenings, and the inset map covers evenings and Sundays. This delineation helps eliminate the need to include confusing text boxes about service before/after 9pm and the dashed red line. The inset map is also a bit larger than its current iteration.

In the new map, we also added “OAKLAND” to join “PENINSULA,” “SAN FRANCISCO,” “SAN JOSE,” and “EAST BAY” as a geographic marker. We added Oakland to the map because we can and because our heart belongs in Oakland.