Trouble Sleeping? Next Time, Catch BART

People work hard and party hard in San Francisco, and they deserve a good night's sleep. Which they're getting. Unfortunately, many are sleeping on the regional transit system, BART. This is not necessarily a problem — it's not illegal to sleep on a train — but it becomes a problem after midnight, when the system shuts down.

Nearly every evening, dozens of riders sleep past their stations and end up at the last stop on the system, in distant places like Bay Point, Dublin, Fremont and Millbrae, with no way to get home. So what happens when the train reaches the last station? A BART transit officer walks through the cars, waking up people.

At Bay Point, the riders have several options, none of them good. They can call a friend, they can catch a cab (fare to Oakland: $60) or they can huddle outside the station and wait until 6 a.m., when the system starts up again. There are no late-night buses at cold and windy Bay Point; there's not even a convenience store. Most who wake up there are a little tipsy, embarrassed and confused. "The best ones," said a transit officer, "are the guys who fall asleep and then tell us, the train never went to my station. Well, it didn't go around it." Posted 10/1/2003