Thursday, July 2, 2009

Subway vs. Bart

Hi everyone!

After having our long day of class we in front of the book store to takes of to a crouse. Unfortunitly we had no other option but to take the Subway in order to get to our destination.

Unlike the Bart, all subway sytems run underground. So when you think of it, when you are riding the subway you are right below the streets of New York City. Amazing! Also, the subway station is always hot and I'm guessing its hot because of the fact that its underground. People in New York don't seem to have respect for the public suvices, the Subway station reeks of urine from the people who have urinated on the walls. Also, one impotant thing to remember when riding the subway is that you need to rush in and out of the train or else you will either miss your train os stop. Jessica had to learn it the hard way when the doors closed on her as we were getting of the train to go back to Columbia.

On the other hand, I think Bart is much better in terms of waiting for people to board and get of the train. Also, the Bart system is not all built ungerground and have stations that are atually located above the city instead of being under it. For example, El Cerrito Plaza Bart station is at a higher altitude then the actual city itself. Adding to the benifits to riding the Bart, the Bart wins the metal when it comes to being the cleanest and coolest form of transportation in the Bay Area. Why? Because when using the Bart you don't go underground as much as you do using the Subway and if you do happen to go underground to use the Bart there will be air conditioning so it will always be cool. ( Thank god for AC!!)

P.S Subway is way more confusing to take then Bart! So I guess Bart wins in this round! Yey BART!!!

1 comment:

Don Gosney said...

Sofia,

I’m guessing you haven’t ridden on BART all that much. Or maybe you have but you’ve missed out on some of the finer parts of the system.

My favorite is the elevator at University Avenue in Berkeley where it ALWAYS smells of urine and on one trip in the elevator I got to share it with a large pile of fecal matter inside the elevator.

I DO appreciate, though, the AC in BART.

Plenty of the underground BART stations can get pretty warm, too but just as the BART car approaches you get that big gust of wind as the train pushes the air out of the tunnel.

Normally most underground tunnels are much cooler than what’s above ground. The reason being that they’re not affected by the sun.

When tunnels are really deep, though (many hundreds if not thousands of feet deep) they do get pretty warm but that’s because they’re closer to the Earth’s core.

Even though BART runs on a strict schedule, the train operators actually look out the windows to make sure everyone’s gotten on okay. That’s simply not allowed in New York City. It may even be some sort of city ordinance to treat the customers as though they don’t matter.

I have a great video clip of the Tokyo trains where there are people whose sole job is to push and shove people to cram more of tem into the cars. You can talk about it all you want but to see the clip it gets really scary.

Something else that New York has is elevated trains. Because the streets are already so full, the trains run elevated above the streets similar to some of our BART tracks.

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