Out with the old, in with the new
Thousands bid adieu to legacy BART trains
Many gathered en masse to ride from MacArthur station to Fremont on the last public run on the last of the legacy BART cars.
By M. T. Eley
A line of people coils fifteen hundred feet from the up escalator at Oakland’s MacArthur BART station on April 20th. I would know, l because I’m at the end of it.
The reward: a ride that wouldn’t have amused any of us the last 52 years. But today, we are here en masse to ride from MacArthur station to Fremont on the last public run on the last of the legacy BART cars. Not much brings Bay Area citizens together like aging transit, it seems. Nostalgic for what? That indestructible PVC hide of the seats, that rubbery smell of the speckled floor; yes, that screech that announces every slight curve?
The line moves forward rapidly — this is public transit, after all. I ask a BART employee how many folks attended today. “At least two, three thousand. Way more than we expected.”
“It’s like a really high capacity rollercoaster,” transit nerds behind me quip regarding the rapidly moving queue. They spout facts from the “Bartchives.”
What do these loud, old BARTs mean to us? I suppose: so many lives passed through this not unpleasant, mandatory public space. A thousand commutes to jobs that paid more than we ever dreamed of making; jobs we felt paid too little. Trips back home after a few Anchor Steams, your first or hundredth shot of Fernet. Ballets, black boxes, a barista competition in Oakland. I remember taking the blue line out to Dublin a few months after I moved here — it felt like a journey to Nevada — and meeting a girl for a first date who I’d marry two and a half years later.
The new ones take us to all these places too, and are silky silent by comparison, except the mellifluous pre-recorded station announcements that boom over actual conductor announcements. But they haven’t done it for us, and so here we are at what feels like a wake and a graduation party.
Behind me, the transit nerds debate if a single BART car would go faster, à la a rollercoaster, than a whole train. “Of course not, because of the individual EMUs [electrical motor units?] on each car, they bring their own power. It’d be fractionally the same.”
Does one old car hold the same raw emotive power as a whole string of them? Maybe. As we step into car 1512, you hear its effects: “You gotta feel these seats for the last time,” “I’m gonna cry!” “Gonna miss these benches that face each other.”
I look behind and see that the line petered out behind us. This is really it. This is the last ride of the last rides before a final saunter to the Hayward railyard and the maw of the scrapyard. Conversation drops to a reverent murmur. Let us hear the old screech again. Across from me, someone takes out their Airpods.
We move forward with that humming, two, sometimes three-note rev-up, as if those EMUs down below are switching gears.
Past the Oakland Coliseum, the A’s logo still on the scoreboard. Old BARTs are gone and the As are in Sacramento for the next two years before decamping to Vegas. Try not to be sentimental. A new BART blasts by, buffeting the windows with wind. Doors open. Fresh spring breeze rushes into the air conditioned languor made drowsy by sunlight. Doors are closing. “Last run of the first fleet,” over the intercom, crisp as ever.
The old girls seem fine to me. Then again, I prefer the cable cars to Waymos so anything old seems fine to me. Works of BART, if you will. I look over and notice that one of the posters advertising today’s event is popping out of its frame. A tempting souvenir, but I already bought one of the car number markers at the merch table — 1823 Y. I like to think it’s the car I rode to meet my wife for the first time.
We are in that long stretch between San Leandro and Bayfair where the gentle lolling and soft whining of the wheels almost lull you to sleep. The car is quiet, now. The stops are going by too quickly.
At the end of the line, in Fremont, many are waiting for us to arrive. I look again at the peeling poster for today’s event, now also a part of the past. Two guys — the transit nerds — have also been eyeing it, same as me. They too have number placards, wrapped in bubble wrap.
But then a girl, with a bag of every free memento from the day but no car marker, rushes up to them. She asks breathlessly, indicating the poster flopping in the AC breeze, and they nod yes. She carefully pulls it down, folds it in half, then steps out onto the April sunshine.
One last gift from the last BART. May the new ones be just as generous.
M. T. Eley is a San Francisco-based writer.
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