5 ms·

SF's BART braces for another protest

33 points by loganlinn 15y ago

pavel_lishin 15y ago
So the service outage only affected people underground? I'm not sure how the stations are laid out - what happens if the protest is held right outside the station? If they cut service, would people not on BART property be affected?
- Aloisius 15y ago
  You should get service outside the station above ground from the cell phone towers. Even most of the fare gates aren't deep enough underground to block service completely. Once you get past the fare gates though in SF, you typically will head down some escalators that take you deep enough to block cell service without BART's cell repeaters.
  - jof 15y ago
    Just a point of interest -- most of the SF BART stations are not "repeaters" per se (except perhaps in the context of a network or higher layer protocol), but are actually full blown computerized radio systems themselves. I suspect most are colocated BTSes (or equivalent) that are fed by leased lines.
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Yes, nothing, and no. Without knowing exactly what BART has planned, as a general matter it's OK to exercise free speech on the station concourse, which is to say outside the the fare gates, as long as one is not obstructing other users of the transit system. BART is attempting to avoid a protest being held on the actual platform where trains are going past, both because of the minor risk of someone falling onto a live rail and electrocuting themselves, and because of the more realistic risk that protestors will attempt to do the same thing as last month - stop trains by holding the doors open and/or climbing on top of them, thus bringing the BART system to a halt on the San Francisco side. I'm in tepid agreement with the BART management here; while I feel that BART police are indeed trigger-happy and need reminding that protection and service can often be accomplished without needing to shoot anyone, I don't see what good it does to hold passengers hostage just because they happen to be riding the BART at the time of the protest. Yes, yes, protesters want to draw attention to their cause, but there are other ways to do that, such as by running for election to BART's board of directors [0]. Recent protests at transit stations in SF have featured masked anarchist wannabes smashing up Castro subway station [1] and racial epithets directed at a BART spokesperson [2]. This is not really my idea of healthy civic society at work. 0. http://www.bart.gov/about/bod/ http://www.bart.gov/about/bod/ 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2P5LIrFDXc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2P5LIrFDXc 2. http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-07-12/bay-area/29763722_1_bart-police-protesters-civic-center-station http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-07-12/bay-area/29763722_1_ba...
- duskwuff 15y ago
  The BART stations in downtown San Francisco are all deep underground (two to three long flights of stairs / escalators). Service in them, and in the tunnels between them and under the Bay, is completely dependent on BART running cell repeaters.
maeon3 15y ago
For this protest, I say we create a "Congress emergency off switch", only to be used in exceptional circumstances, so we can stop any single-color copyright infringements, child pornography breakouts or other crises as determined by fox news. The button would be hosted by a website, and if enough people press it at one time, then congress gets shut off and all proceedings are suspended until further notice.
- philwelch 15y ago
  So basically, Anonymous gets to shut down Congress all the time for no good reason.
- akavi 15y ago
  Is this comment being downvoted for being sarcasm, for being poor sarcasm, or for having been misinterpreted as serious? Just to sate my curiousity.
  - bugsy 15y ago
    It's a pretty good suggestion, weird it's getting downvotes.
  - tedunangst 15y ago
    I just don't understand how shutting down congress will stop a single color copyright infringement from happening.
georgieporgie 15y ago
I can't help feeling that BART can't really get anything right. Surly employees, unusually bad BART cops, smelly trains that run extremely slowly at random intervals, and now interfering with a protest. What I don't understand is why they have any interest in hampering the protest in the first place. Until the protest has been shown to be violent, how is it even conceivably within their legitimate sphere of influence to interfere with it? Particularly when it interferes with the service that regular riders have come to expect.
- benatkin 15y ago
  You left out this, which I happened to catch on twitter the other day: > One door on the #BART train gets stuck, the entire train is out of service. Hundreds of people out onto the platform! #incredible https://twitter.com/#!/mjijackson/status/100612825134800898 https://twitter.com/#!/mjijackson/status/100612825134800898 I had that same sort of thing happen to me in Phoenix, but people don't take public transportation as seriously there.
  - sorbus 15y ago
    That actually seems reasonable to me. There's no easy way to swap a car out of the train in-station, and it would be next to impossible to keep everyone out of one of the cars in the train. Would probably be better if they had some way of quickly locking the door closed, but the trains don't seem to have that feature.
  - hack_edu 15y ago
    I've been on trains where both doors in a car broke and the train kept going. The mechanic was fixing the door as the train went along, even.
  - 7402 15y ago
    I question whether one second-hand tweet is a useful data point. I have ridden BART most workdays for the past 7 years. I have encountered trains with stuck doors a several times, and on none of those occasions was the train put out of service. In fact, they even have pre-printed stickers that say something to the effect of "This door is not working; please use other door." I have seen these perhaps half a dozen times since I began riding BART regularly. Note that these doors were stuck _closed_. It would be an obvious safety hazard if the door was stuck open - in that case I can well imagine that the operator would not move the train from the station.
bilbo0s 15y ago
This is why a good leader lets the mob have it's day. Stop a protest because it turns violent...well everyone kind of expects that. Even the protesters. Try to stop a protest before it happens, or throw up logistical roadblocks...and you end up with the Civil Rights Era redux. Always let people have their say...and get it over with. You can more easily stand a gut punch than death by a thousand cuts.
- philwelch 15y ago
  That's what China tried 20-some years ago.
  - bugsy 15y ago
    OK, I have to ask what is the meaning behind that comment. I do understand you are referring to the Tiananmen Square protests.
    - philwelch 15y ago
      Before the crackdown, the Chinese government was willing to wait out the protests until people had their say and it was all over with. Except the protests went on, continuously, for months. If they had turned violent, they would have likely been able to overrun the central government entirely. I'm not going to justify what the Chinese army did in Tiananmen Square, but what they did, they did as a last resort. If they had been a little more proactive and arrested the first few hundred people before it blew up, or impeded access into the square, or did anything to prevent that critical mass of people from assembling all in one place, it would be a different story.
      - bugsy 15y ago
        OK thanks, so it sounds like you're saying that if the government allows even small peaceful protests, these could turn into larger ones that threaten the existing power structures, therefore protests should not be permitted at all?
gojomo 15y ago
And this time, people are bringing their own femtocells! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtocell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtocell (I don't in fact know if anyone is. But they should! Most US carriers offer femtocells for home broadband users that could presumably, with some work, run off batteries and relay traffic up the escalators to a sympathetic ground-level uplink.)

33 points by loganlinn 15y ago

So the service outage only affected people underground? I'm not sure how the stations are laid out - what happens if the protest is held right outside the station? If they cut service, would people not on BART property be affected?

Aloisius 15y ago
You should get service outside the station above ground from the cell phone towers. Even most of the fare gates aren't deep enough underground to block service completely. Once you get past the fare gates though in SF, you typically will head down some escalators that take you deep enough to block cell service without BART's cell repeaters.
- jof 15y ago
  Just a point of interest -- most of the SF BART stations are not "repeaters" per se (except perhaps in the context of a network or higher layer protocol), but are actually full blown computerized radio systems themselves. I suspect most are colocated BTSes (or equivalent) that are fed by leased lines.
anigbrowl 15y ago
Yes, nothing, and no. Without knowing exactly what BART has planned, as a general matter it's OK to exercise free speech on the station concourse, which is to say outside the the fare gates, as long as one is not obstructing other users of the transit system. BART is attempting to avoid a protest being held on the actual platform where trains are going past, both because of the minor risk of someone falling onto a live rail and electrocuting themselves, and because of the more realistic risk that protestors will attempt to do the same thing as last month - stop trains by holding the doors open and/or climbing on top of them, thus bringing the BART system to a halt on the San Francisco side. I'm in tepid agreement with the BART management here; while I feel that BART police are indeed trigger-happy and need reminding that protection and service can often be accomplished without needing to shoot anyone, I don't see what good it does to hold passengers hostage just because they happen to be riding the BART at the time of the protest. Yes, yes, protesters want to draw attention to their cause, but there are other ways to do that, such as by running for election to BART's board of directors [0]. Recent protests at transit stations in SF have featured masked anarchist wannabes smashing up Castro subway station [1] and racial epithets directed at a BART spokesperson [2]. This is not really my idea of healthy civic society at work. 0. http://www.bart.gov/about/bod/ http://www.bart.gov/about/bod/ 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2P5LIrFDXc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2P5LIrFDXc 2. http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-07-12/bay-area/29763722_1_bart-police-protesters-civic-center-station http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-07-12/bay-area/29763722_1_ba...
duskwuff 15y ago
The BART stations in downtown San Francisco are all deep underground (two to three long flights of stairs / escalators). Service in them, and in the tunnels between them and under the Bay, is completely dependent on BART running cell repeaters.

maeon3 15y ago

For this protest, I say we create a "Congress emergency off switch", only to be used in exceptional circumstances, so we can stop any single-color copyright infringements, child pornography breakouts or other crises as determined by fox news. The button would be hosted by a website, and if enough people press it at one time, then congress gets shut off and all proceedings are suspended until further notice.

philwelch 15y ago
So basically, Anonymous gets to shut down Congress all the time for no good reason.
akavi 15y ago
Is this comment being downvoted for being sarcasm, for being poor sarcasm, or for having been misinterpreted as serious? Just to sate my curiousity.
- bugsy 15y ago
  It's a pretty good suggestion, weird it's getting downvotes.
- tedunangst 15y ago
  I just don't understand how shutting down congress will stop a single color copyright infringement from happening.

georgieporgie 15y ago

I can't help feeling that BART can't really get anything right. Surly employees, unusually bad BART cops, smelly trains that run extremely slowly at random intervals, and now interfering with a protest. What I don't understand is why they have any interest in hampering the protest in the first place. Until the protest has been shown to be violent, how is it even conceivably within their legitimate sphere of influence to interfere with it? Particularly when it interferes with the service that regular riders have come to expect.

benatkin 15y ago
You left out this, which I happened to catch on twitter the other day: > One door on the #BART train gets stuck, the entire train is out of service. Hundreds of people out onto the platform! #incredible https://twitter.com/#!/mjijackson/status/100612825134800898 https://twitter.com/#!/mjijackson/status/100612825134800898 I had that same sort of thing happen to me in Phoenix, but people don't take public transportation as seriously there.
- sorbus 15y ago
  That actually seems reasonable to me. There's no easy way to swap a car out of the train in-station, and it would be next to impossible to keep everyone out of one of the cars in the train. Would probably be better if they had some way of quickly locking the door closed, but the trains don't seem to have that feature.
- hack_edu 15y ago
  I've been on trains where both doors in a car broke and the train kept going. The mechanic was fixing the door as the train went along, even.
- 7402 15y ago
  I question whether one second-hand tweet is a useful data point. I have ridden BART most workdays for the past 7 years. I have encountered trains with stuck doors a several times, and on none of those occasions was the train put out of service. In fact, they even have pre-printed stickers that say something to the effect of "This door is not working; please use other door." I have seen these perhaps half a dozen times since I began riding BART regularly. Note that these doors were stuck _closed_. It would be an obvious safety hazard if the door was stuck open - in that case I can well imagine that the operator would not move the train from the station.

bilbo0s 15y ago

This is why a good leader lets the mob have it's day. Stop a protest because it turns violent...well everyone kind of expects that. Even the protesters. Try to stop a protest before it happens, or throw up logistical roadblocks...and you end up with the Civil Rights Era redux. Always let people have their say...and get it over with. You can more easily stand a gut punch than death by a thousand cuts.

philwelch 15y ago
That's what China tried 20-some years ago.
- bugsy 15y ago
  OK, I have to ask what is the meaning behind that comment. I do understand you are referring to the Tiananmen Square protests.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Before the crackdown, the Chinese government was willing to wait out the protests until people had their say and it was all over with. Except the protests went on, continuously, for months. If they had turned violent, they would have likely been able to overrun the central government entirely. I'm not going to justify what the Chinese army did in Tiananmen Square, but what they did, they did as a last resort. If they had been a little more proactive and arrested the first few hundred people before it blew up, or impeded access into the square, or did anything to prevent that critical mass of people from assembling all in one place, it would be a different story.
    - bugsy 15y ago
      OK thanks, so it sounds like you're saying that if the government allows even small peaceful protests, these could turn into larger ones that threaten the existing power structures, therefore protests should not be permitted at all?

gojomo 15y ago

And this time, people are bringing their own femtocells! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtocell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtocell (I don't in fact know if anyone is. But they should! Most US carriers offer femtocells for home broadband users that could presumably, with some work, run off batteries and relay traffic up the escalators to a sympathetic ground-level uplink.)