Bay Area Rapid Transit - Comparison With Other Rail Transit Systems

Comparison With Other Rail Transit Systems

BART, like other transit systems of the same era, endeavored to connect outlying suburbs with job centers in Oakland and San Francisco by building out lines that paralleled established commute routes of the region's freeway system. The majority of BART's service area, as measured by percentage of system length, consists of low-density suburbs. Unlike the New York City Subway or the London Underground, individual BART lines were not designed to provide frequent local service, as evidenced by the system's current maximum achievable headway of 13.33 minutes per line through the quadruple interlined section. Muni provides local light-rail and subway service within San Francisco city limits and runs with smaller headways (and therefore provides more frequent service) than BART.

BART could be characterized as a "commuter subway," since it has many characteristics of a regional commuter rail service, such as lengthy lines that extend to the far reaches of suburbia with significant distances between stations. BART also possesses some of the qualities of a metro system in the urban areas of San Francisco and downtown Oakland, where multiple lines converge, it takes on the characteristics of an urban metro, including short headways and transfer opportunities to other lines. Urban stations are as close as one-half mile (800 m) apart and have combined 2½ to 5-minute service intervals at peak times. On the whole, BART is very similar in character to the Washington Metro, which opened 4 years after BART and likewise features outdoor, far-flung suburban stations in addition to underground, closely spaced urban stations, with the latter receiving more frequent service than the former.