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shannon_aSitting in the middle of downtown Berkeley is a bronze-colored gazebo that looks like it's straight out of the 1970s (which, as it turns out, it is). It sits just a block from the western entrance to campus; the block of Allston Way in between is destined to (perhaps) one day become a pedestrian walkway highlighting Berkeley commerce. For now it's still a road and a culinary corridor, including everything from several fancy restaurants to Bongo Burger and Starbucks. Games of Berkeley has the privilege of sitting at the western end of one of the most traversed walkways in Berkeley, just across from the BART station itself.
(I didn't even notice the car illegally parked on the plaza next to BART before I pulled this picture out of my camera.)
BART, or the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, came into existence in 1972. It replaced the older Key Line train system--and indeed some of the BART lines in the East Bay--particularly those from North Berkeley to Richmond--run right along where the old Key Line used to be.
BART is not a bad transit system, but it's by no means a world-class one. Its biggest problem is that it's solely an arterial system, with major lines running to the major cities in the Bay Area. That means that once you get into the city of your choice, unless your destination is right on the BART line, you then have to transfer to another, less efficient transit system. Thus, even after a quick 30-minute BART ride into San Francisco, it can take another hour to get out to the furthest corner of the city, despite the fact that SF is a mere 49 square miles.
There are other flaws too. BART is a relatively expensive system to use for urban transit, with few discounts and no monthly passes. It also stops running for 4 or 5 hours every night, which has certainly caused me problems over the years. I've had friends crash at my place because they missed the last BART train, I've skipped gaming conventions in SF because the event I wanted to attend was after BART stopped running, I've avoided early airplane flights because they were too early to get there on BART, and I've almost missed the last BART train of the night when a flight into SFO got delayed. The fact that BART can't actually serve its customers through the middle of the night is surely the biggest embarrassment of the system, and something that keeps people from depending on it as their main form of transit. I'm also worried about the future of the system, as the state has been relatively reluctant to increase the system size over the years* and because it's running up to its limits for the number trains that can be run, resulting in BART starting to take some seats out of trains run at rush hour.
Despite the problems, I use BART every week to go to Endgame in Oakland. I used to take it down to Fremont when I was still at school and wanted to visit with the parents over the weekend, and I occasionally take it into San Francisco.
Getting back to Downtown Berkeley BART, it's an entirely underground station. As I understand it, there was room for the train to run above ground when it was built, and in fact BART runs above ground almost everywhere--other than downtown San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley. However, the people of Berkeley didn't want an unsightly and loud train running above the streets, so they taxed themselves to put it under ground.
Thus, there's a large cavern under the center of downtown Berkeley, with four or five stairways running down to it from various places along Shattuck Avenue. The gazebo is simply the central one. Sometimes on a wet day, when I've been caught without an umbrella and I'm coming home, I'll duck underground at the northernmost stairwell and come back above ground in the southernmost one. It saves me maybe a quarter-mile of getting doused, but I think I particularly enjoy the feeling of temporarily dancing through a secret world, hidden beneath the streets.
There are three other BART stations in Berkeley: Ashby to the south and North Berkeley to the north, along the same line, and Rockridge to the east on the Pittsburg/Bay Point Line. Downtown Berkeley BART is the only one I particularly use, however, mainly because it's the most convenient to the library, restaurants, and the commerce of downtown.
(It's also marginally closer to my house than Ashby.)
* This is largely due to the high cost of BART as opposed to buses and other trains. However, I think these decisions are mainly made by out-of-touch politicians who have never ridden BART, a bus, or a train. I can certainly say BART is more pleasant, more convenient, faster, and considerably less likely to smell of urine. You have to pay to create a public transit system good enough that people will want to use it.
(I didn't even notice the car illegally parked on the plaza next to BART before I pulled this picture out of my camera.)
BART, or the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, came into existence in 1972. It replaced the older Key Line train system--and indeed some of the BART lines in the East Bay--particularly those from North Berkeley to Richmond--run right along where the old Key Line used to be.
BART is not a bad transit system, but it's by no means a world-class one. Its biggest problem is that it's solely an arterial system, with major lines running to the major cities in the Bay Area. That means that once you get into the city of your choice, unless your destination is right on the BART line, you then have to transfer to another, less efficient transit system. Thus, even after a quick 30-minute BART ride into San Francisco, it can take another hour to get out to the furthest corner of the city, despite the fact that SF is a mere 49 square miles.
There are other flaws too. BART is a relatively expensive system to use for urban transit, with few discounts and no monthly passes. It also stops running for 4 or 5 hours every night, which has certainly caused me problems over the years. I've had friends crash at my place because they missed the last BART train, I've skipped gaming conventions in SF because the event I wanted to attend was after BART stopped running, I've avoided early airplane flights because they were too early to get there on BART, and I've almost missed the last BART train of the night when a flight into SFO got delayed. The fact that BART can't actually serve its customers through the middle of the night is surely the biggest embarrassment of the system, and something that keeps people from depending on it as their main form of transit. I'm also worried about the future of the system, as the state has been relatively reluctant to increase the system size over the years* and because it's running up to its limits for the number trains that can be run, resulting in BART starting to take some seats out of trains run at rush hour.
Despite the problems, I use BART every week to go to Endgame in Oakland. I used to take it down to Fremont when I was still at school and wanted to visit with the parents over the weekend, and I occasionally take it into San Francisco.
Getting back to Downtown Berkeley BART, it's an entirely underground station. As I understand it, there was room for the train to run above ground when it was built, and in fact BART runs above ground almost everywhere--other than downtown San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley. However, the people of Berkeley didn't want an unsightly and loud train running above the streets, so they taxed themselves to put it under ground.
Thus, there's a large cavern under the center of downtown Berkeley, with four or five stairways running down to it from various places along Shattuck Avenue. The gazebo is simply the central one. Sometimes on a wet day, when I've been caught without an umbrella and I'm coming home, I'll duck underground at the northernmost stairwell and come back above ground in the southernmost one. It saves me maybe a quarter-mile of getting doused, but I think I particularly enjoy the feeling of temporarily dancing through a secret world, hidden beneath the streets.
There are three other BART stations in Berkeley: Ashby to the south and North Berkeley to the north, along the same line, and Rockridge to the east on the Pittsburg/Bay Point Line. Downtown Berkeley BART is the only one I particularly use, however, mainly because it's the most convenient to the library, restaurants, and the commerce of downtown.
(It's also marginally closer to my house than Ashby.)
* This is largely due to the high cost of BART as opposed to buses and other trains. However, I think these decisions are mainly made by out-of-touch politicians who have never ridden BART, a bus, or a train. I can certainly say BART is more pleasant, more convenient, faster, and considerably less likely to smell of urine. You have to pay to create a public transit system good enough that people will want to use it.