By Jules Suzdaltsev
Just in time for the holidays, our SF-East Bay night owl prayers have been partially answered, thanks to a pilot program expanding the reach of weekend buses between these regions. The AC Transit Allnighter buses will run every half hour from the Mission to the Easy Bay between 1 a.m. and 2:30 am. Although sadly this is not 24-hour BART service like we’ve been desperate for, it’s definitely another step towards helping late night commuters across the bay. At the very least, it lessens that weekend witching hour a bit (missing BART on a Saturday night is in my top 10 worst nightmares.)
The pilot program, scheduled to run for at least the next year, was voted into existence by the BART Board of Directors back in October according to SFBay.ca, and covers a route on the 822 AC Transit bus from the 24th St/Mission BART station to the Pittsburg/Bay Point BART station, with stops at Market Street, Van Ness Avenue, and the Transbay Terminal on Howard and Beale on its way to the East Bay, and 14th Street/Broadway, Rockridge BART, Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill, and Pittsburg/Bay Point.
Of course, the restaurant/bar/nightlife industry has reason to be excited too, as at least a few nights a week, those living on the other side of the Bay from where they work will be able to use public transit more frequently. Hopefully this new AC Transit and BART partnership will show transit leaders that night owl transportation is a long overdue option that is worth the necessary funding. Tickets for trips across the Bay will cost $4.20, and $2.10 for local trips without crossing the bridge, however funding for this line comes primarily from Lifeline transit grants intended to ease transit issues for low income residents, and the BART budget, which only expects to make back $100,000 through ticket sales of the nearly $800,000 program cost.
The new 822 bus line comes with improvements to the existing 800 and 801 lines, which already provide service from SF to Richmond and Oakland to Freemont, and are supposed to start running every 20 minutes as opposed to every half hour.
BART says it will reevaluate the effectiveness of the program following the yearlong pilot, and perhaps if we’re lucky, it will expand it to cover the entire three hour gap between BART trains, or god forbid, just run BART the entire weekend like we all want.
h/t InsideBayArea, SFBay.ca, photo by Matthew Roth/Flickr
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