Geez Louise, we’re only into February and already it’s been a horrendously awful year for BART. Right off the bat, a BART police officer shoots an unarmed man, captured live on video by passengers and viewed worldwide; then, on Tuesday, two BART trains collide, injuring 11 people. Could it get much worse? Well, yes, actually.
Turns out that Nutmeg, a hapless rat traveling on BART with an apparently distracted mom, was left on the train Jan. 31.
You ask, “DOES THIS MEAN THERE IS A LIVE RAT RUNNING LOOSE ON BART??????” and the answer is, not necessarily. According to the sign posted by the distraught mom visible above, Nutmeg was in a blue and brown striped carrier.
Exactly what happened after that, we don’t know, except that the mom’s 9-year-old son has been crying since Saturday. But then, as the woman who posted this image on TwinkleShots put it, “Hello? You left a rat on a BART seat? This seems unlikely to end well.”
BART may consider old and new technology — buses, cable cars, and a floating train held up by magnetic forces — as options for a long-waited service to carry train riders to the Oakland International Airport directly from BART’s Coliseum station.
BART is going back to the drawing board for an airport connector project because its $386 million elevated tramway plan has hit a dead end.
Being a political junkie, I watched the Democratic primaries for any sign that transportation might become an issue. It never did and thus my career as a political blogger never got off the ground.
But today I see that the confluence of the general election, $4.50-a-gallon gasoline and John McCain’s legislative record have given me another chance to give the Daily Kos a run for its money (OK, so I’ll start with Political Blotter and work my way up).
Once again, I feel compelled to share my mis- fortunes at the expense of revealing my stupidity. I have to believe that there are others who regularly miss buses and have to drive an extra 15 miles to retrieve a forgotten mobile phone.
Perhaps it was my punishment for doubting that high-speed rail would ever be built in my lifetime. Perhaps it was what I deserve for not believing that people will all switch to public transit if only it were more convenient.
Or perhaps it was ignoring the sign in front of the Sacramento parking garage that said it closed at 7 p.m.
So I was in a hurry to get to the High-Speed Rail Authority board meeting where the board decided not to decide, thus deciding on a South Bay route for high-speed rail, which will improve the lives of millions of Californians and will be coming Read the rest of this entry »
What’s cooler than a bus, cheaper than most modern rail transit systems and a source of civic pride nearly everywhere it exists?
If you guessed light rail, you’d be just as wrong as I was. I always thought that light rail was a way to revive streetcars without the shame of having to say we were rebuilding systems we trashed in the middle of last century in favor of cars and buses.
Once again, I feel compelled to share my mis- fortunes at the expense of revealing my stupidity. I have to believe that there are others who regularly miss buses and have to drive an extra 15 miles to retrieve a forgotten mobile phone.