When people board BART, they often jostle and shove their way to the emptiest car at the back of the train in a desperate attempt to find a seat.
If that fails and they’re forced to stand, they grab an overhead strap and sway awkwardly, feigning complete focus on their Kindle so as to avoid the risk of inadvertently making eye contact with the crush of humanity around them.
That’s a shame. One spot on BART is clearly the best one. I’m honestly shocked people aren’t constantly fighting over it. It’s often empty even when the train is full–and you can easily find and grab it on your next ride.
Tunnel Vision
I originally discovered this secret, prime spot after watching Tunnel Vision, a 90-minute YouTube video from local creator Vincent Woo.
Subtitled “An Unauthorized BART Ride”, Tunnel Vision has become a breakout YouTube hit. While Woo’s typical videos get a few thousand views at best, Tunnel Vision is currently hovering around 330,000.
To make the video, Woo secretly attached a GoPro camera to the front of a BART train, and recorded an entire ride on the Yellow line. As Woo narrates and calming music plays, the train leaves SFO, passes through the city, traverses the Transbay Tube, and winds through the hills of the far East Bay.
Not to be outdone, BART itself shot and released an official version of the video earlier this year, hoping to capitalize on Woo’s breakout success.
These videos are delightful to watch, in a strange, ASMR-esque way. But if you ride BART frequently, you can experience something very much like Tunnel Vision live–or even shoot a crude version yourself without the hassle of taping GoPros to the front of moving trains.
Dibs!
The next time you take BART, don’t try to decode the agency’s vague-but-emphatic announcements about this being a “7 car train.”
Instead, head to the far left of the platform–as far from where the train will first arrive as you can get. When the train stops at the platform, board the first car, hang a left, and walk all the way to the end of the car.
There you’ll find the coolest spot on all of BART. The spot is located just behind the train’s driver.
They sit in a small cab at the front of the train. But in an interesting design quirk of the system’s new, flat-fronted trains, both the driver’s front windshield and the glass window on the door into the train’s cabin are clear and mostly aligned.
This means you can stand in the very front of the cabin and get a driver’s-eye view out the front of the train.
If you don’t mind craning your neck, you can also sit in either of the rear-facing seats beside the door and get a comparable view. If you hold your phone just right, you can even get a pretty neat vertical video for the ‘Gram.
I love sitting here. You’re basically riding shotgun on a BART train. And if it’s bright enough outside, or you don’t mind low-key smushing your face against the window, you can even watch live as your train passes through the Transbay Tube or pulls into the airport, just like in Tunnel Vision.
A Whole New (BART) World
Nabbing this spot is super cool both for the POV perspective it provides, and for how it changes your perspective on a BART ride.
Until I discovered the front window spot, I typically experienced BART rides as a predictable cacophony of sounds and movements.
There was the familiar bang-and-whoosh of entering the Berkeley Hills Tunnel, the banshee scream of Oakland’s downtown section, the clonk-and-sway of the Tube, and the staccato stopping and starting of the passage between Embarcadero and 24th Street.
Looking out the front of the train and adding a visual component, though, your whole perspective changes. You realize that the strange, stuttering pauses typical of a BART ride appear to correspond to times when the train is passing over small railroad crossings used for maintenance work.
The stopping and starting in the City happen because the stations are incredibly close together. Montgomery Street and Embarcadero stations are only about 20 seconds apart–you can see the light of Embarcadero down the tunnel while your train is still stopped at Montgomery.
You also get insights into the life of a BART driver. I had always assumed that BART used some kind of super complex, computer-vision-enabled technology to tell when all the train doors were shut, and to ensure no one got stuck in them.
Turns out, on a multi-billion dollar, uber-modern light rail system like BART, the preferred way to tell if the doors are closed properly is to stick your head out the window and have a look.
One also gets the sense that driving a BART train can get pretty dull. Signs on the entry to the operator’s cab warn drivers not to use their personal phones or tablets while driving the train.
I guess after a few thousand rides, the magic of whooshing past Mount Diablo or worming your way under Oakland wears off!
Play Nicely
BART’s drivers, it seems, don’t always appreciate being watched. I’ve seen drivers hang their orange high-visability vests over the cabin door, blocking the window and discretely sending the message “Quit snooping on me, brah.”
Of course, you should use common sense. Don’t block the door into the driver’s cabin, and don’t distract the driver from the very important task of not crashing your train.
For their part, BART doesn’t restrict passengers from standing in this spot. But they do say they’ll happily kick you off the train if you “interfere with the operation of a BART vehicle.” So be silent, prepare to move if the driver needs to get through the door, and overall, play nicely.
If the window is clear, the spot isn’t taken, and you’re able to be quiet and non-distracting, though, I highly encourage you to seek out this unique space.
You can still awkwardly sway and listen to Grace Cathedral Hill on your Airpods while wordlessly ignoring the existence of the people around you. Only now, you’ll have a killer view while doing it.
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