What I don't understand is why they have any interest in hampering the protest in the first place. Until the protest has been shown to be violent, how is it even conceivably within their legitimate sphere of influence to interfere with it? Particularly when it interferes with the service that regular riders have come to expect.
> One door on the #BART train gets stuck, the entire train is out of service. Hundreds of people out onto the platform! #incredible
https://twitter.com/#!/mjijackson/status/100612825134800898
I had that same sort of thing happen to me in Phoenix, but people don't take public transportation as seriously there.
I have ridden BART most workdays for the past 7 years. I have encountered trains with stuck doors a several times, and on none of those occasions was the train put out of service. In fact, they even have pre-printed stickers that say something to the effect of "This door is not working; please use other door." I have seen these perhaps half a dozen times since I began riding BART regularly.
Note that these doors were stuck _closed_. It would be an obvious safety hazard if the door was stuck open - in that case I can well imagine that the operator would not move the train from the station.
This has happened a few times this year. Although the video is dated April 1, I can vouch for the authenticity; this is my neighborhood line and I have gotten used to the recurring problems of particular rail carriages. If it were up to me I'd scrap the light rail on the west side of the city and put in buses instead.
If you have pretty a good reason to believe something bad will happen, one ought to do their best to protect anyone that might be potentially harmed.
But as far as I've heard, all BART has been going off of are anonymous blog posts about gathering for peaceful protests.
If there is some kind smoking gun of violent intentions, I have yet to see it.
It seems to me that both sides have been escalating and blowing a non-situation (shutting power to leased, shared-carrier facilities) out of proportion. It's one thing to reduce coverage, and an entirely different thing to intentionally jam.
There is, of course, the contextual undercurrent of Oscar Grant being murdered by Johannes Mehserle.
Worst-case thinking and CYA-syndrome are poor strategies. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/05/worst-case_thi...
Without knowing exactly what BART has planned, as a general matter it's OK to exercise free speech on the station concourse, which is to say outside the the fare gates, as long as one is not obstructing other users of the transit system. BART is attempting to avoid a protest being held on the actual platform where trains are going past, both because of the minor risk of someone falling onto a live rail and electrocuting themselves, and because of the more realistic risk that protestors will attempt to do the same thing as last month - stop trains by holding the doors open and/or climbing on top of them, thus bringing the BART system to a halt on the San Francisco side.
I'm in tepid agreement with the BART management here; while I feel that BART police are indeed trigger-happy and need reminding that protection and service can often be accomplished without needing to shoot anyone, I don't see what good it does to hold passengers hostage just because they happen to be riding the BART at the time of the protest. Yes, yes, protesters want to draw attention to their cause, but there are other ways to do that, such as by running for election to BART's board of directors [0]. Recent protests at transit stations in SF have featured masked anarchist wannabes smashing up Castro subway station [1] and racial epithets directed at a BART spokesperson [2]. This is not really my idea of healthy civic society at work.
0. http://www.bart.gov/about/bod/
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2P5LIrFDXc
2. http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-07-12/bay-area/29763722_1_ba...
Once you get past the fare gates though in SF, you typically will head down some escalators that take you deep enough to block cell service without BART's cell repeaters.
Just to sate my curiousity.
Stop a protest because it turns violent...well everyone kind of expects that. Even the protesters.
Try to stop a protest before it happens, or throw up logistical roadblocks...and you end up with the Civil Rights Era redux.
Always let people have their say...and get it over with. You can more easily stand a gut punch than death by a thousand cuts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtocell
(I don't in fact know if anyone is. But they should! Most US carriers offer femtocells for home broadband users that could presumably, with some work, run off batteries and relay traffic up the escalators to a sympathetic ground-level uplink.)
