Monday, August 15, 2011

BART Excitement

So I’m sure by now that everyone has heard about  how Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) shut down cell repeaters in its San Francisco stations and in the Trans-Bay Tube last week.
Well, now the FCC is looking into whether or not this is a fineable offense.  Last night, Anonymous hacked the MyBart database, and there was a protest scheduled for today.
Around 4:45, the principal of our company was watching a group of helicopters circling west of our office.  I figured they were over the Civic Center BART station as that was where I had heard the protest was going to be staged.
I just checked the BART iPhone app to see if Civic Center had been reoopened, and the BART Twitter feed is an amazing read (Times are relative to 8:00 PM PDT).
All stations open. For advisories visit bart.gov or m.bart.gov; sign up for email/sms at bart.gov/alerts; or txt "BART delay" to 878787
7:40 PM
Embarcadero Station reopened.
7:18 PM
Embarcadero Station now closed for entries and exits.
6:46 PM
Embarcadero now open for exits only.
6:41 PM
Montgomery Station reopens for entries and exits.
6:30 PM
Civic Center Station reopens for entries and exits.
6:20 PM
Trains now stopping for riders to disembark at Powell.
6:12 PM
Montgomery Station closed due to civil disturbance.
6:02 PM
Powell Station closed due to civil disturbance; trains now stopping to let riders off at Civic Center.
5:47 PM
Civic Center Station has been closed. Trains are running through.
5:29 PM
I got to the Montgomery station gates about 5:05, and waited less than 5 minutes for a train.  We sat for a long time for people to board (I got a seat, lucky me), so I think the times above may be the announced closure times, but not when it really happened.

Looking forward to seeing what tomorrow will bring.

UPDATE: Got the real times off of the Twitter feed on the BART app.

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