The use of such dummy cameras is not common knowledge. Even one member of BARTs Board of Directors said he was unaware of the decoys, and conceded that they amounted to a security gap in the Bay Areas backbone train system. A spokeswoman for the agency said working cameras will be on every car in BARTs new fleet, the bulk of which will arrive between 2017 and 2021.
At present, what appear to many riders to be sets of four cameras on the ceilings of each BART car are primarily fakes, an effort by agency officials to deter criminals particularly vandals without spending money on a more extensive surveillance system for soon-to-be junked cars.
Although BART has many working cameras on platforms and in station lobbies, the fact that cameras inside trains are decoys comes with a cost, as some crimes and key incidents arent preserved on film.