New BART fare gates coming to more stations

BART is expanding its new gates to try and reduce fare evasion to the eight stations you see on this map. Sean Chitnis is at the Montgomery station talking with riders about those changes. BART says it's ready to expand the new gate to many more locations. They started testing it late last year in West Oakland. If you take a look over here, you'll see what the classic look is. And this is what you have seen at most BART stations for quite some time. Well, the new gate is going to be more than seven ft tall. So if you think about the fact that I am six ft tall, that's another foot above me. Just one way they hope to try and prevent more people from being able to jump over and skip paying the fare. So take a look at a map that shows you all the different locations that will be receiving gates in the months ahead. That includes stations in Richmond, Antioch, SFO and Oakland's Fruitvale station. Here in the city, there are four stops, including Montgomery, Powell, Civic Center and the 24th Street station. BART says this won't be able to stop all fare evasion, but the new gates will help to stop most of it. The difference will be a drop in maintenance costs for the agency while keeping stations cleaner and increasing revenue. Riders have shared here in San Francisco that they've seen people sneak through the gates many times, getting very close to the point that it's uncomfortable just so they can avoid paying the fare. I think it's important. I think we can rely on public safety to do their part, but I understand that they're burdened with a lot of things in our community that they have to deal with. So I think that having another system of protection within the BART right to prevent fare evasion might be helpful. So in addition to the new gates being taller, they will also have more advanced sensors. And right now they're using different materials at that first station to test the gates in West Oakland to figure out which ones will last longer. They also have to make sure that the sensors can handle the clipper card and there's less of a delay. But once they are ready to go, we will see those gates arriving at these new stations that have been listed in May or June. And then ultimately they want to have more than 700 plus gates throughout the system by the end of 2025. And there's an incentive to keep that plan $300 million in state and regional subsidies if BART is able to meet it.