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!!
Tries to be multiple features, doesn’t implement well for any
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.
Please be aware of parking gotchas when using this app. For daily parking, you enter in the spot number where you parked, and pay the $3.00 fee. However, the app will gladly allow you to pay for spots that are considered “reserved parking until 10 AM” and that you apparently aren’t allowed to park in. You may get a parking citation as a result. When I parked in this spot, I thought I was safe since I paid for it. I figured that if the app let me pay for the spot, it was because its wasn’t reserved. Fortunately I only got a warning citation. This is a “bug” in the app - they know exactly which space you parked in and when you purchased the space. If someone else has reserved the space or the spot is otherwise off limits, instead of BART giving you a citation, the app should display an error message telling you that the space is unavailable. Otherwise, it is a decent app.
You know what you would have to do if there were no BART! I don’t even want to think about that. Instead, I’ll just kick back at 70 MPH and let my BART operator drop me off work! I drove the Bay Bridge since 1985 and I don’t really ever want to do it again. BART is a great transportation system. I heard on the radio that administrators are not spending the money correctly. Whatever. The trains are there for me. This morning, I reinstalled around 8 seat cushions that had been thrown around by an earlier passenger. A little more security would be good. And the challenges at Civic Center are like a few other stations causing negative light. I see you working all of the time. I LOVE BART! Keep up the good work!
Needs improvement: No Station to station list in trip planner
In the “Plan Trip” menu, this app needs an alphabetical list of stations to automatically appear as choices under the search bubble. The webpage app used to do something similar to this. I don’t want to type into the search bar and have to frantically guess at the correct name of the station that I want to depart from or arrive at, but I can always easily find it in a list. The trip planner would be way easier and more efficient if I could just look at the standard BART route map and pick a starting station and a destination station from it before anything else. Also, when trip results come up, I see that connected bus route numbers/letters are immediately visible but if I want to know what BART route it is I have to click to see another screen. Shouldn’t the name of the BART route show up on the first screen the same as the bus numbers?
I like the convenience of paying on the app. I think they did an upgrade as one day I was paying for my parking while on the train and I was too close to MacArthur station that doesn’t have parking and it charged me for that station. They were able to fix it after I complained and it seems like now they don’t list by station, as long as you have your license plate that’s what it’s gonna go by not what station it’s at so if I were to park at a different station, I still would be charged from the app no matter what station. I just hope this is true cause I haven’t try it.
The parking feature is great (though I wish I could just pay for parking and not have value “saved” in a wallet as I rarely park). I don’t understand why this app asks me for location access every single time I open it even though I have it set to Never in my iPhone settings. Really not okay and Apple needs to force them to stop asking. The closest station feature is super annoying too since I don’t have location turned on, it just shows me 12th Street Oakland as my closest station, though I never use that station. It would be nice to be able to turn it off. I can understand where it’s useful in some circumstances but not for most regular riders who are going to set their favorites.
I'm confused by all the negative reviews. Maybe they updated it recently? It does exactly what I need it to do: show me the train schedule for the station I want. Nice that it automatically finds the nearest station, makes it easier. I might use the trip planner occasionally for trips I take that aren't my commute. And I like that the advisories sure up on the home screen. One slight nit, I liked that the web site automatically refreshed when I switched to it on my iPhone, but every 15 seconds is just fine for me. Great job, impressive app, not just for a public organization, but any developer!
This app is amazing. There is a few changes I would make to the trip planner to improve it. I would start by adding in the option to be able to filter out specific transit agencies from plans (based upon cost effectiveness, personal preferences and/or shortest travel times). Then, I would also add in the route list and length to each segment of a journey (like Google does) because it helps riders make sure they won’t miss their stop (especially during their first trip on that route). And finally, I would eventually add in the ability to make the trip planner save the directions in the “notes” section of the calendar event you’re adding instead of adding everything to the title of the event, because that doesn’t actually help if you need to refer back to it for help while you’re between stations (like San Bruno to South San Francisco) and have no internet. Make these changes for the future, and I’d use this app instead of Google for all of my BART based Transit trips!
It has been awhile since I took BART from Civic Ctr SF to Antioch.
It has been awhile since I took BART from Civic Ctr SF to Antioch. I usually drive everywhere. The new Covid rules have made my BART ride today very enjoyable. Everyone is supposed to wear a mask of course. There were a few folks on the other side of the tunnel who still refuse to wear masks on the train. Whatever! I assume they have never worn masks since the beginning of this pandemic nor have they bothered to get vaccinated. The ride was pleasurable, the trains are clean, and the new e-trains from Pittsburg Baypoint to Hillside in Antioch are pretty convenient.
too complicated ... BART essentials should be default
It’s great the developers want to cover all bases, but the default for a BART app should be BART only trips ... station to station with drop down menus to choose the station; times between trains for transfers, notification for alerts, etc. Making this the default will aid usability for those of us that want simple BART leave and arrive times; users who want more complicated trips can choose what they want covered in a connectind link. Doing this will also mean that users who just want BART only don’t have to sign up in order to get easily available results. An all things to all people home page is not a good design option for a BART official app. Also, this app is vertical only on the ipad; I’m hoping the developers will find that an easy fix and go ahead and fix it right away.
Trains canceled every day, homeless or mentally deranged people in every car, total absence of police enforcement on the trains and in the stations, zero mask enforcement, escalators repairs started before Covid and still not even close to finished, blatant deferred maintenance even of the new three-door cars. Nothing is being done well in BART, nothing is being done right. I ride twice a day from Orinda to Montgomery and back and it’s dirty, dangerous, and disgusting. How many BART directors ride BART daily? My hunch is none! They should be ashamed of themselves.
Paying for parking is way more of an effort than it should be. It’s advertised that you can take care of it with your Clipper card but there isn’t any apparent way to actually do it. The standard toll booths where you pay for transit don’t include ability to pay for parking. Turns out we had to enter the paid area to locate the parking toll booths. Then you find out that they only accept cash. What?? We entered our parking spot number and were directed to deposit $3.00 in cash. At the spot where you enter bills there was a note that said “NO BILLS”. Crazy. We shifted over to the next parking toll booth and was able to get it paid, just as we heard our train depart. In summary, it’s too difficult to pay for parking!!!
I was really excited BART released an official app, however this app fails to deliver the basic functionality I expect from a transit agency. I am able to see a departures list, but after tapping a departure I can’t see which stations a train will go to and what times it will arrive. I tried to use the trip planner but it gave me nonsensical results until I checked another mapping app that told me about a service advisory affecting normal routes (fortunately the trip planner was taking this into account). Finally, it doesn’t feel at home on iOS at all; must have been developed with some non-native cross platform framework that messes with scrolling and stuff. I hope BART is able to take this feedback and improve the app in the future.
Update service advisories. I’ve just been inconvenienced because my normal station was closed due to police activity. There are announcements at the bart station which is too late because I’m already there versus taking an Uber or a bus to a different station...and checking the app their service advisories COMPLETELY BLANK!!!! What the hell is the point. Of a service advisory section of its not updated... Complete waste of memory on my phone as it is.
Why roll out a new app when it is so flawed? -Planning a trip is extremely cumbersome—can’t just plan a trip from one station to the other, it wants you to input actual addresses from point A to point B (you’re not Google Maps so don’t try to be). -No notifications of delays!! Seriously? What’s even the point of this app if there’s no notification function to alert me of delays or station closures?? I want be be able to make an informed decision about my method of transport—not find out when I arrive that the station is closed (e.g. Monday, April 8, 2019 during the morning closures of Richmond-El Cerrito stations). -My advice: stay far away from this app or delete the official bart app and use the 3rd party app. This app is useless.
Perhaps, it came out of a contest for worst app for the blind? I am a programmer, and can’t believe how such a simple functionality app could be so bad. Buttons are not labeled, which is the most basic blind accessibility thing you are supposed to do. On the plan trip section, you just pass random labels, which keep repeating origin and destination again and again, without any clue as to why they are repeating or what they could mean. They are buttons that speak out “outline black search with 54 points.” Things should be better than this. The folks who often have no choice but to use public transit, get apps they can’t use. There you have it. Your tax dollars at work.
Reasons why I am enjoying riding BART less and less: 1. Too many drugged out people inside train cars who make the ride unpleasant and create a sense of danger. 2. People smoking/injecting drugs inside train cars. 3. People sitting with their filthy shoes on the seats. Also people hogging 2 seats for themselves. 4. People not respecting standing in line on the platforms. 5. Sometimes people playing loud, vulgar music inside train cars. 6. New train cars are smaller in size than the old cars. There are fewer seats and less room for people to stand. Train cars need to have more seats as people grab them. 7. Majority of times able bodied, young people occupy the seats reserved for the elderly and the disabled. They don’t care if there’s elderly or disabled person standing. Elderly and disabled people are often too timid or intimidated to ask for the seat. 8. Cars sometimes have the strong pungent smell of weed. 9. Announcements not always clear inside the trains and at stations 10. Trains not always on schedule.
The recent update for BART has made it so much quicker to use as it immediately shows up with the departing times for the nearest station when you open the app vs having to to scroll and select your station every time. 👍🏼
This works about as well as automated answering systems where you have to keep shouting “ agent”. What should be easy to find and intuitive for a first time user, is not. Example: No way to reserve a single regular parking spot (only multi day /ev) The “ daily” parking payment menu item is only available from 4am to 3pm so at 3:12 pm I cannot even view to see if this is what I’m looking for. I added a payment card and my clipper card. However, I can’t find any way to check my clipper card balance, or add $ to the account. When I search parking, I keep getting referred to “download the official app” Hello, I AM signed into the official app. Trying to find out if my station still has parking set aside for after 10 am arrival. That question is not in FAQ’s, and “search” comes up with nothing. I have been on many US and foreign metros. BART is by far the worst run. Throw out the corrupt board and have the State take it over. They can’t even hire a decent team for an app.
Ok so this is a bart app while I get you’re trying to be helpful.. do I need to see every location option in the valley?? I’m planning a trip so I’m typing “C-A-S-T-R-o” I want station and get 15 million options for Castro street & this l, Street & That.. Can’t the the actual Bart stations be top result PLEASE. The app doesn’t live update either.. say if it’s one of the Sundays where the bart is a mess and you’re being forced to transfer at 12th and Oakland ... and they decide to move the sf train to a different platform (there’s 4 at 12th) you’d never know til it’s too darn late via the app. And can we please please have a better push for trip updates?!
I’m trying to set up this new app for parking. There are a ton of things that don’t make sense to me. For one, am I supposed to fund it from the beginning? It shows a zero balance but I have yet to see a place to add funds. (And yes, I set up a credit card for payment.) Another issue is that my iPhone will always insert my complicated passwords with bio confirmation , automatically in other applications. NOT HERE. Nope. I can’t even cut/paste from my Apple password keychain. Bonus round: The app logs me out every time I blink, and going back and forth to read and enter the password is a huge headache. All this just to pay for parking? Why???
As a visitor, I found Bart a combination of confusing, broken, and expensive. The transit card purchased at the airport doesn’t work elsewhere, which is not communicated anywhere. The card dispensing machines are mostly broken. Our visa credit cards didn’t work. We could only purchase 5 cards on our ATM cards but have a party of 6. There are so many trifle modes that I cannot navigate how to get around. The clipper app requires that I provide my phone number and address. Why is that needed to ride a bus? What an unnecessary intrusion. I’ve travelled a lot, and this was a relatively stressful and difficult transit experience.
The real-time departures don’t update fast enough. Train had pulled out of station for a minute or two but the app was still stuck at 2 minutes to arrival. Another instance I come down to a train waiting but the app said that train had already left. The web app’s real-time departures are much more accurate, up-to-date, and can be manually refreshed. And what’s with only allowing 3 favorite stations?
The most obvious request anyone would have when using this app would be to check schedules between two stations and that isn’t an option on my app or any of my family’s phones of different models. We have to start entering text and it wants to tell us how to get to the station from our home (walking, bus lines, walking etc) when all we want is just the times between two stations! Tech support said they can’t duplicate this problem and offered no other assistance.
The app should convert to local time zone. For example, I’m currently landing at SFO and my phone will still be on EST until I regain cell service. When I went to ‘plan a trip’, it showed me route options starting around 10:30pm pst, but I’m landing around 7:20pm pst. It’s nice that the app is intuitive enough to show options in the near future based in the system time of the phone, but it needs to be corrected to convert the time based on the time zone setting of the users phone.
I had a wonderful surprise this morning when I was looking to pay for early bird parking. The parking part of the app has improved greatly! Now we can pay for parking at the Pittsburg station anytime, it’s not limited to Early Birdbird before 5:30am anymore. You’re good as long as you have your Clippercard attached to your parking app to prove that you paid for Bart fare. No more paper tickets necessary. Way to go BART!!!
It would be far easier if parking payments were handled automatically by scanning license plate at garage entrance, similar to how FasTrak handles bridge tolls. Instead, you have to make sure to open this app every time you park, look up the parking space number, make a payment. This is a huge waste of time. Forget to open the app one day and now you have a another citation nightmare to deal with! They tell you it's by design, and simple user error, so just pay the fine, rinse and repeat.
Unreliable time expectations within the app and between the app and stations
Within the app, I see inconsistent departure times between the home and plan trip tab. It was frustrating to plan a trip and then to see my train is ACTUALLY leaving much earlier than in the plan trip section (assuming the home tab is more accurate). Arrival times vary from 0-2 minutes between what is shown on my app and what is displayed on the screen at stations.
3rd party apps are better than this. When I use the trip planner feature I want a simple point A to Point B, maybe including BART transfers. When I tried to do a simple trip planner from Rockridge to Del Norte it gave me a complicated trip including walking somewhere, taking Bart a few stops, getting off walking again then taking the 57 bus only to walk and get back on Bart again to get to my destination. It should’ve just been Rockridge to MacArthur to Del Norte. This is ridiculous.
This app is the worst bart app. no way to save favorite trips in a way that makes the app meaningfully easier to use. Format needs to be updated so favorite routes appear at the top of the page not just favorite stations. Auto update doesn’t seem to work, need a way to manually refresh and to show how old the data is.
This app can be very useful, when it works at its best. However, there have been times (once in every 5-8 tries) when the “Plan trip” function goes dead. Attempts to find an alternate navigation tactic have all been unsuccessful. Recently, I had to delete and reinstall the app, to schedule a trip the next day. Many persons do not have the luxury of having that much time to plan a trip. BART, you can do better than that!
Well intended and poorly executed. My simple ride from 12th Street to Pleasant Hill is mapped out to include a trip on the Richmond line with a transfer at 19th street instead of just waiting for the Antioch bound train. That’s some great programming right there. Did anyone who actually use the system help develop it? What is sad is that there are other apps out there, better than this, but BART likely developed this from scratch. Because why think clearly when you can just write a check?
It looks like there’s some feature to change the list of stations when you change location? It’s broken in some way; if I have some stations collapsed and some open, it will suddenly swap the list and hide the WRONG stations. I’m watching 12th at Oakland, suddenly the display switches to 16th street mission, and 12th street is collapsed. Having the stations alphabetical is madness too. Maybe organize them by line or zone or something?
As a few others have mentioned, the app no longer shows the nearest station even when allowed location data. Hoping for an out of band fix soon! Otherwise it does (or used to do) what it is designed for: showing up-to-date and accurate departure times.
BART should either dramatically improve the cellular data coverage in their underground stations (especially along Market Street at rush hour), or update this app to be able to work offline, at least for schedules/trip planning. (One’s probably easier and quicker than the other!) Otherwise, it’s a pretty decent app.
Have been using the app for about a year now. Was working fine until recently. It shows the “ Nearest station” as one that is 5 stops away and definitely not the closest. There is no way to correct due to very limited options so now I wonder if the app is functioning correctly. Hopefully the developers can resolve the issue.
I have monthly parking but am unable to see parking payment t history in app because it states some error and has done so for months. I am unable to input my license plate and unable to change between the two clipper cards I have stored in app when I enter the station to show I am officially parked. Therefore, I constantly receive needless, annoying parking citations at the Antioch Bart station.
I use this for Plan Trip feature but now am completely unable to select or enter station names in Plan Trip. It shows a list that then disappears and doesn’t reappear. I enter my station and it doesn’t recognize it. I’ve rebooted and deleted the app and downloaded multiple times hoping that will help, but I give up. Also the darn advisories take up 1/3 of the page. I should be able to clear them.
Appreciate your team’s hard work on this. Definitely more features that can be added (as detailed in many other reviews), but this is a great starting point, and delivers immediate value from the first screen.
My biggest wishlist feature item is to use this app instead of a physical clipper card to ride the bart. Also to add $$ to my account from the app. If you need an example, look at the starbucks app. I believe in you devs! You can do it!!!
The Bart app is easy to use, timing is pretty accurate and if there’s issues during commuter time Bart keeps you dated for alternative routes to get you where you need to go. Definitely recommend this app!!!!
I only gave it 3 stars because sometimes in some stations the time is not updated, for example at the SFO airport, the arrival time of the train is different from that of the application.
When it works, it is not accurate and when it died, the customer service was typical BART. The app stuck and asking for help was replied to with a lot of questions. Ok, so I answered them and waited. And got MORE questions. I got sick of the lack of actual help and deleted the app. Maybe BART should put their energy into getting their trains to run on time and not be wall-to-wall packed during commute times instead.
I am a user that wants to see the map (show where trains are running in real time (if its hard let me click on the station i want to see). I really dont enjoy having to scroll through lists of station names (which i sometimes forget) - i never forget where i want to go on a map. this would be that much easier/faster to navigate.
It singularity fails to answer my needs. When I’m home - not in the Bay Area - it’s opening gambit is to tie me to a station. Dude, chances are I want a route map to figure out my needs. When I’m in the Bay Area, it opens with the next train times for my closest station, but there’s no way to flip to my desired start times, instead I have to go to trip planning… it’s clearly written by someone who doesn’t use transit
Since the electrical problem on this line, the Richmond line train information on this app can not be trusted. Countless times I have gone to the station based on the information on the app. to find no details of the train at the station. I asked the station agent about this, he shrugged his shoulders and said it was above his pay grade. Take the RICHMOND line off the app, until you figure it out.
When a train is approaching the station, it immediately say “leaving” even though it hasn’t started to board the passengers... Please fix this bug by changing the display... 1) now approaching 2) now boarding 3) departing that way it’s more accurate than “leaving” other than that... it’s a good app
BART should increase security in their parking. I often see broken car windows and my car was broken into at Antioch station. The app needs some more work, I purchase a reserved parking but was not able to use it. When I tried to cancel it won’t let me.
The official Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) app has arrived. It’s the easiest way to plan your trip and get accurate real time train departures with data straight from BART, along with official service alerts. The BART app offers exclusive features for hassle free travel for daily commuters, infrequent users and tourists alike: -Plan your entire end to end trip with BART’s exclusive Trip Planner giving you the fastest route from your starting point to your destination using BART and multiple modes of transportation, including connecting transit, biking, walking and driving. -Step by step navigation with personalized preferences and saved favorite stations and trips. -Real time departures and schedule timetable. -Customized in-app notifications about BART service and announcements. -Contactless in-app Daily Fee parking payment -Service disruption information linked to your trip itinerary. -Report a Biohazard that needs addressing and access our BART Watch App for reporting crimes. -Escalator and Elevator advisories. -Fleet of the Future train tracker. -Cancelled trip notices. -Easily see the last train of the evening by station when you’re planning your night out or your trip home from the airport. -Station information (including if it offers a parking lot and secured bike parking). -Seamless connection to bart.gov and BARTable for deals, events, and fun. -It’s ad free; who wants to be distracted when looking how far away your train is? BART is working on future features of the app to enhance your BART experience... Tell us about the features you want.
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