New BART cars will have three doors, plastic seats, no carpets, and designated bike areas!

The only catch is that you’ll have to wait until 2015 to try them out.  SFGate reports:

The cars will sport a sleek modern look, cleaner seats, digital information displays, even air conditioning that works on hot days.

Each car will have three doors to speed boarding, but will still have 60 seats, all made of an easier-to-clean material. Seats will be reconfigured with standard seating in rows at each end of the car, and seats situated more informally around standing areas and places for wheelchairs, bikes and luggage in the center.

Looks like those cranial liminal survey scans conducted on BART passengers have finally paid off!  But will they allow bikes on board during rush hour?

[Pics via SFGate]

Previously:

27 Responses to “New BART cars will have three doors, plastic seats, no carpets, and designated bike areas!”

  1. Cool — that’ll be weird and futuristic when I come back to visit San Francisco after my retirement. Looking forward to the Chinatown subway for the same reason. Oh, and the San Jose BART extension.

  2. John says:

    There’s bikes on every rush hour car I’m on now. Why would that change?

    • Lis says:

      Bikes are not allowed on BART trains during rush hours – but only on the downtown section, and in the busy direction – into town in the morning, out of town in the evening. Perhaps that’s just not thoroughly enforced!

  3. Tony The Pony says:

    Don’t trust BART to do anything.

  4. StowawaySG says:

    I prefer the seats as they are. They’re unlike any other transit car in the world and the bacteria builds up the immune system.

  5. Siguanaba says:

    I hope we don’t give up the comfort…

  6. Katie says:

    So somehow reducing the amount of places people have to sit down is making things better? Does not compute.

    • rod says:

      more people fit on a train standing than sitting. /compute

      • Herr Doktor Professor Deth Vegetable says:

        And you could fit even more people by replacing BART cars with cattle cars.

    • Sweet T says:

      Doesn’t the article say that the cars will “still have 60 seats”? It’s the same amount of places for people to sit, but configured in a way (against the sides) that creates more space for people to stand.

  7. dave says:

    I like those little slots they appear to have for sticking bike wheels in.

    Overall though, I prefer the fabric seats. Otherwise, it’s a glorified Muni car. Those hard plastic seats blow.

    • nico says:

      do you have any idea how much filth lives on those nasty seat cushions ? I saw a homeless dude wacking off on my way to Oakland one morning. You probably sat in the stain last week.

  8. Herr Doktor Professor Deth Vegetable says:

    Long haul public transit like BART needs more seats than these cars offer.

  9. Seven says:

    Nooooo! Please BART, please, no plastic! Keep the carpet and those sofa-like seats! I really like that.

  10. DomPara says:

    Begone, stinking cloth!

    Heres hoping they engineered the wheels to not scrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaape the rails this time.

  11. Scott says:

    The wheels are not a problem as much as rails-on-concrete are. I’m guessing they’ll have a new design to try and keep the cars from ruining the rails over time.

    Currently BART has to continually grind rails during nonservice hours to take out the ‘wavyness’ that the current cars introduce over time.

  12. nico says:

    …and I thought BART was in the red ?