BART (Official)

BART Real Time is terrible both on the app and the stations, especially at Berryessa. The times on the app and the times on video monitors and the arrival displays have different information on each all at the same time. Example: I want to go from Berryessa to Hayward. The app says Daly City train not leaving for 40 minutes while there is a Daly City train in the station with doors closed. A Richmond train is coming into station saying 2 minutes to leave. I get on the train to Richmond, doors close and BART app says “leaving” (from Berryessa). 2 minutes later the Daly City train opens doors, lets passengers on and immediately leaves. I couldn’t get off the Richmond train to run over to Daly City train because the doors are closed. Richmond train doesn’t leave for another 15 minutes even though BART app says “leaving” the whole time. Meanwhile the Daly City train has left even though real time app says a Daly City train isn’t leaving for 40 minutes. The real time seems to work a little better from Warm Springs north. This needs to be fixed or a new app should be created.

This app has simplified my whole life. The online paying for parking is so easy to use. Every single day I had to pay $3 for parking & the machine ONLY accepts cash and if you don’t have exactly $3 they give you ONLY coins AND the machine doesn’t accept coins so basically the whole week you’re just walking around with a ton of quarters accumulating in your pocket (one time it gave me all dimes & 1 nickel and I almost snapped, also that’s def not the right amount of change but what am I gonna do, ask for 5 cents back?) and it is so awful. I am gen z and hate cash & hate going to the bank to get cash for the sole reason of parking at BART. My only complaint is that I thought it was offered for every station so when I went to another station I didn’t pay. Luckily I did not get a ticket but beware!!

This app appears to be an attempt at merging several different apps that address different issues: Schedule, Live ETA of train arrivals, hazards reporting, and advisories/outages. It’s a good initiative but it experiences issues on all of those attempts. The scheduler and live ETA don’t work well after midnight but BART has trains up to an hour past midnight, so it is rough there. It also only provides ETA down to minutes while other apps like BARTPro provide updates down to seconds and are also hooked to the BART API for accuracy. Advisory and outages are okay, it’s about 80% accurate for reporting escalator outages, but not perfect. Hazards reporting is the worst, I have received no confirmation or replies each time I’ve reporting incidents from finding people taking residence in elevators to exposed injectable needles lying on seats. At least you would get a confirmation and often a live response back from a person when reporting via BART Watch app, so I’m not sure if my reports are going through. All in all, it’s a good initiative but the app is mostly not usable compared to other more reliable apps at this time for the different features.