The Bay Area Council is among the coalition of advocacy groups and legislators vying to secure a $5 billion temporary bailout for BART and other Bay Area transit agencies.
About 60% of respondents said they would ride BART more frequently if it improved safety and cleanliness. 44% of the 357 respondents who ride BART regularly said they’ve never or rarely seen a police officer on the system. About half of respondents said they have either seen a crime or been a victim of one on BART. The code of conduct prohibits drugs, smoking, drinking and illegal behaviors. Almost 80% of residents polled said BART should act more aggressively in ejecting people from trains and stations who violate the agency’s passenger code of conduct. 
Fifteen percent of respondents said more police would make them feel less safe, while the remaining 13% were unsure.
73% of the 1,000 respondents polled in San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa and San Mateo counties said they feel more comfortable riding BART when a uniformed police officer is present. “There can be no higher priority for BART and the future survival of the system than to direct every ounce of energy and resources into making the system safer and cleaner,” the Bay Area Council’s CEO and president, Jim Wunderman, said in a statement.Īmong the findings from the Bay Area Council’s “BART Perceptions Survey”: To secure its future, BART must overcome hardened, negative perceptions from voters and riders who feel the agency hasn’t made much progress reducing crime and filth on trains and in stations. Failure could mean whittling BART service to “doomsday” levels so infrequent that it collapses the agency’s customer base. With ridership stagnant since September, BART has a one- to two-year window to either recover large swaths of lapsed riders or secure a state or local taxpayer subsidy before incurring massive annual budget deficits. 
But the polling reaffirms the challenging path for recovery facing the Bay Area’s fare-dependent rail system.
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