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San Francisco BART station escalators shut down due to too much shit stuck in gears

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X

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Human waste shuts down BART escalators:

When work crews pulled open a broken BART escalator at San Francisco's Civic Center Station last month, they found so much human excrement in its works they had to call a hazardous-materials team.

While the sheer volume of human waste was surprising, its presence was not. Once the stations close, the bottom of BART station stairwells in downtown San Francisco are often a prime location for homeless people to camp for the night or find a private place to relieve themselves.

All those biological excretions can gum up the wheels and gears of BART's escalators, shutting them down for long periods of extended repairs, increasing station cleaning costs and creating an unpleasant aroma for morning commuters.

Five of the nine escalators that weren't working at BART stations on Wednesday were in downtown San Francisco, said Jim Allison, a BART spokesman. While there are many reasons a BART escalator can break down, the beating they take at night is among the most acute.

The problem is tough to combat, especially with so few downtown public restrooms open late, BART authorities said.

Officers have to witness someone in the act to issue a citation, said Officer Era Jenkins, a BART police spokeswoman.

Must witness to cite

"Nobody wants to be walking in urine and feces, I know that, (but) if we don't see it or the person doesn't admit to it, they can just say it was someone else," Jenkins said. "Certain crimes you don't see, you can't enforce."

BART police officers sweep "each and every stairwell at each and every station" before the stations open in the morning and ask people who spent the night in the station to move somewhere else, Jenkins said.

If they spot a mess, the officers alert cleaning crews, Jenkins said. Station surveillance cameras usually are not monitored when the stations are closed, she said.

San Francisco police officers also can check the downtown station stairwells, but they generally only respond when someone complains, which isn't often, said Albie Esparza, a San Francisco police spokesman.

"When they are out of sight, people don't usually call about them," he said.

Not much BART can do

BART officials point out that they have little ability to change the reasons people camp at the base of BART stairs or use the plaza of the 16th Street/Mission BART Station as a public urinal, an issue highlighted in a recent Chronicle Watch.

"As much as we like to have an oasis from the rest of the world, we don't look at (these issues) in isolation, we look at (them) as part of a puzzle," Allison said.

BART officials have recently begun meeting with San Francisco authorities to explore ways of cleaning up the 16th Street plaza. Those conversations could easily evolve to encompass the downtown stairwells, Allison said.
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S

Skellig Gra

Member
Jurassic%2BPark%2B20.jpg
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.
 
plasmasd

plasmasd

Member
Quick way to fix this. See someone shitting, hang them from gallows at BART station. Will solve the problem in one day.
 
B

Borgnine

MBA in pussy licensing and rights management
So homeless people drop one on a stair, and then turn on the escalator to "flush" it.
 
A

Auron_Kale

Member
Toki767 said:
And I thought I was crazy for always taking the stairs.
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I usually get off bart at Embarcadero when going to work and usually enter from Montgomery or Powell when going home - 9 times out of 10 using the escalator.

...I'm going to have to start considering using the stairs all the time now for sure...
 
P

pigeon

Banned
I like the idea that there is a specific amount of shit that justifies a Hazmat team, presumably written down in some city ordinance.
 
B

BotoxAgent

Member
Auron_Kale said:
In the article, bart actually does use gates when they close the stations for the night. Unfortunately, the gates don't really deter the behavior from happening.
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That sucks. Good thing I never take the BART (probably never will now).

I recently moved to SF....I used to live in Chicago and then NYC. The homeless situation seems to be a lot worse here (and I recently went to Los Angeles this past weekend, and that was even worse!). I guess it's the nicer west coast weather that attracts these homeless out in the open.
 
G

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
Auron_Kale said:
Actually, it's pretty bad in the mornings too, despite it being cool. (This morning was no exception...but probably this past Monday morning was particularly foul.)
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Sucks for you guys. Does the BART run all night service? Why dont they just closed it off after the last train leaves?

Borgnine said:
More like BARF am I right. Are there no public restrooms?
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Op says there are barely any restrooms open at night.
 
G

GG-Duo

Member
Miri said:
You really think SF is the only city with this problem?
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No, but it seems that I hear about homelessness in SF a lot -- which in itself isn't a problem, but I read the article and the city says "there's nothing we can do about it"... that kind of attitude is just not really attractive for a tourist.
 
A

Auron_Kale

Member
BotoxAgent said:
That sucks. Good thing I never take the BART (probably never will now).

I recently moved to SF....I used to live in Chicago and then NYC. The homeless situation seems to be a lot worse here (and I recently went to Los Angeles this past weekend, and that was even worse!). I guess it's the nicer west coast weather that attracts these homeless out in the open.
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Bart is pretty handy though and it's my main means of commuting from the East Bay into SF so don't knock it. As far as all the homeless people, they're generally just around but easy to avoid. Every morning when I get off at Embaracdero, there are the usual ones I see, but they're mostly asleep.
 
P

pigeon

Banned
GG-Duo said:
No, but it seems that I hear about homelessness in SF a lot -- which in itself isn't a problem, but I read the article and the city says "there's nothing we can do about it"... that kind of attitude is just not really attractive for a tourist.
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California has an extremely bad homeless problem thanks to Ronald Reagan's "close all the asylums and let all the crazy people fend for themselves" budget program, combined with NIMBY programs in which they literally round up homeless people and bus them to the next county. It's a problem, and one day, God willing, we will have some sort of state government organization that can build some agencies to help deal with it.

That said, it's a silly reason not to come to San Francisco, but my experience of San Franciscans is that they're not about to lose any sleep over it.
 
S

spermatic cord

Member
Bay area public transportation checklist:
[ ] smell of urine/shit/vomit
[ ] rambling person
[ ] rambling homeless person
[ ] thugs blasting their favorite tune over cell phone speaker
[ ] someone rolling a blunt in plain view

Probably a lot more I haven't seen. I generally avoid the public transportation here...
 
A

Auron_Kale

Member
spermatic cord said:
Bay area public transportation checklist:
[ ] smell of urine/shit/vomit
[ ] rambling person
[ ] rambling homeless person
[ ] thugs blasting their favorite tune over cell phone speaker
[ ] someone rolling a blunt in plain view

Probably a lot more I haven't seen. I generally avoid the public transportation here...
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But I saw that same stuff while visiting New York... So again, this could be said about most public transportation.

I use BART because it's cheaper than me driving to SF from Dublin and back, 5 days a week. It's also more convenient for me when going to: Oakland Art Murmur, Berkeley, SFO/OAK airports and just San Francisco in general. And when in SF, I take Muni because again, it's cheaper than taking a cab and when walking is not really a good option (Financial District to Japantown is not something I'd ever want to walk with all the hills).
 
P

pigeon

Banned
spermatic cord said:
Bay area public transportation checklist:

[ ] someone rolling a blunt in plain view
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That's how you know you're on the cool train. (Seriously, I'm unclear on the problem here. Marijuana is only a ticketable offense in California.)

The biggest problem with BART is just that it's not a very GOOD public transportation system outside of the city -- the stops are very spaced out and it's tough to effectively transfer to local public transportation, in my experience, besides which everybody I know is far more terrified of AC Transit than the BART. It's meant to be connector rail, but it needs better connective infrastructure if we want Californians who don't live in the city to actually use public transportation for their everyday trips.
 
E

EleventhDoctor

Banned
pigeon said:
That's how you know you're on the cool train. (Seriously, I'm unclear on the problem here. Marijuana is only a ticketable offense in California.)

The biggest problem with BART is just that it's not a very GOOD public transportation system outside of the city -- the stops are very spaced out and it's tough to effectively transfer to local public transportation, in my experience, besides which everybody I know is far more terrified of AC Transit than the BART. It's meant to be connector rail, but it needs better connective infrastructure if we want Californians who don't live in the city to actually use public transportation for their everyday trips.
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BART is a necessity but it is in no way conveienent. There are never enough parking spaces at the stations, for one. The trains themselves are FUCKING DISGUSTING and they insist on using cloth seats which are literally a petri dish of unstoppable bacteria strains. They don't run enough trains during rush hour so 9 times out of 10 you're standing room only shoulder to shoulder with other commuters-for me it's a 50 minute ride too-there is nothing pleasant or enjoyable about the experience. For the rush hour trains, there should be AT LEAST one more car on the trains-and even then it would still be packed...
 
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