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Transportation companies in the San Francisco Bay Area rely more heavily on fare box revenues than most of the rest of the country. In the past, that was something to be proud of, but given the sharp drop in ridership during the pandemic, it’s become something of an Achilles’ heel.

Federal aid has helped agencies continue to provide services to workers who have depended on them during the pandemic shutdowns, but that emergency aid is coming to an end. Meanwhile, a variety of factors have prevented ridership from returning to pre-pandemic levels, and major transit companies that have relied heavily on paying passengers are facing an existential crisis.

Representatives from multiple agencies and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission presented the issues to the Senate Special Committee on Bay Area Public Transportation, which met for the first time this week. No decisions were made or laws discussed at the hearing. However, there is pressure to take action, particularly after Governor Newsom’s May budget review continued to ignore transit.

California has never played a big part in funding public transportation — SPUR’s Laura Tolkoff said the bulk of public transportation funding in California comes from fares and taxes, with only a small portion of that provided by the state. This is why many of their agencies rely so heavily on ticketing revenue, supplemented by local and regional tax measures. This is low compared to other states, she said, citing New York (where the state provides thirty percent of operational funding) and Pennsylvania (fifty percent) as examples.

“California’s policy goals are ambitious,” she said, “and funding levels have fallen short of mobility, climate, equity and housing goals.”

Several speakers called for a one-off emergency funding from the state to give agencies time to find other sources of funding, which may take a while. For example, the MTC plans to draft a regional tax measure, but it must be approved by the legislature and then passed by voters, which would take at least several years.

“The only way to stop a death spiral is to provide emergency funding in the short term to avoid major benefit cuts,” Tolkoff said. “If you want transit traffic in fifty years, you can’t let it collapse in the next five years.”

Meanwhile, some of the larger agencies would reach the end of their funding and be forced to cut their services so drastically they might never recover. SF Muni, for example, estimates that about twenty bus lines would have to be eliminated, forcing BART to completely halt all weekend service and limit weekday service as well.

“This is not a crisis caused by financial mismanagement,” said committee chairman Scott Wiener. “No amount of tightening of the belt, no fare increases or cuts in services could have prevented this.”

“We need to work to identify long-term sources of funding, and we need short-term help while we implement service changes and other reforms to get ridership back up.”

The pandemic has led to enormous shifts in the use of public transport in recent years. “Remote work has increased massively, particularly in the Bay Area,” said MTC’s Rebecca Long. This has forced authorities to reconsider their purpose and find ways to efficiently accommodate passengers outside of normal commute times. For example, the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District — which manages all routes across the Golden Gate Bridge, including the bridge itself, buses and ferries — says commuters are staying home, but leisure and tourist travel has mostly returned. Their efforts at efficiency include “right sizing” of staff – they employ 100 fewer bus operators than before the pandemic. Also, “we will not be running empty buses,” said Denis Mulligan, the district’s general manager. “If we did that, we would have already run out of government aid.”

The district has suffered dramatic losses in revenue in recent years. Before the pandemic, Golden Gate Bridge tolls were their top source of funding, and public transit fares were their second-biggest, above all the other sources. Fewer people now commute on the bridge and only seventeen percent of passengers have returned to their express buses that took passengers to Santa Rosa and across the Richmond San Rafael Bridge.

BART recently conducted a major survey to find out what it would take for its former commuters to return, and safety and cleanliness were top of the list for nearly all of them. So they increased the presence of BART officers on the trains — they were extremely rarely seen before the pandemic, but are now commonly seen driving and chatting with people on board — as well as unarmed ambassadors. They’ve expanded their cleaning regimen, sweeping every car at each end of its journey and doing a “more thorough cleaning” at night.

However, the former drivers, some of whom have switched to cars, will not hear of these changes unless they drive with the system and far less attention is paid to safe and clean than dirty and mean.

The post Bay Space Public Transit Companies Lay Out Their Case for Emergency Funding – Streetsblog California appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Still, in San Francisco — whose ridership is down 60 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels — BART is weighing whether to improve service at nights and weekends in a gamble they hope will increase off-peak foot traffic becomes. But the system’s budget constraints mean it would have to eliminate less popular services elsewhere to do so.

“You have to take something, and it’s very difficult to take service away from drivers,” said Alicia Trost, a BART spokeswoman. “But we think there are things we can do.”

Federal funds typically account for about 15 percent of transit budgets. And the federal infrastructure package that Congress passed in 2021 committed $39 billion in new funding for mass transit, but much of that is earmarked for major capital work rather than operations.

That’s putting pressure on statehouses, where fights over money have become partisan, and both geographic and rural lawmakers from both parties are wondering why their constituents should advocate making life easier in cities that already seem to have everything.

The Philadelphia-anchored rail and bus system, known as SEPTA, faces a quarter-billion-dollar budget gap in the coming years, which without government help could force 20 to 30 percent fare increases or service cuts. But like Washington, the state government is divided — a Democratic governor and House of Representatives competing with a Senate controlled by rural Republicans reluctant to spend more in the state’s largest city.

“They don’t love Philly and don’t really care about transit in Philadelphia,” Leslie Richards, general manager and CEO of SEPTA, said in an interview.

SEPTA officials must go through a two-step process to receive local money. They are walking the halls of the Harrisburg Capitol with a bill that would allow five counties that the agency serves to collect taxes to help the agency. Even if it becomes law, they still have to convince local politicians to go through with it.

In New York, a proposal to raise $800 million for the MTA by raising payroll taxes for large corporations in areas served by the agency met with such fierce opposition from suburban lawmakers that it is now proposed only for corporations within the city limits.

The tax hike and other state and city subsidies will help close the MTA’s $600 million deficit this year, which is expected to reach $3 billion in 2025, but not enough to avoid a fare hike . Part of the funding is earmarked for an increased subway service, which the agency plans to use for more evening and weekend trips.

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SAN FRANCISCO — US agencies on Tuesday offered new details about how Chinese state-sponsored hackers have used publicly known vulnerabilities to target internet service providers and major telecommunications firms around the globe over the last two years.

Taking advantage of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) allows malicious actors backed by Beijing to break into victim accounts and network infrastructure — via a virtual private network or another public-facing application — “without using their own distinctive or identifying malware,” the FBI , the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in an advisory.

The joint document is the latest effort by the federal government to inform the private sector about the scope of the digital threat posed by China and urge entities to take action to defend themselves.

Last week, FBI director Christopher Wray said China boasts “​​a bigger hacking program than all other nations combined,” warning that Chinese Communist Party leaders are studying the war in Ukraine for lessons about Taiwan. And last year, the US and Western allies attributed a massive assault targeting Microsoft Exchange servers to Chinese state actors.

“Businesses may understand that they’ve had intrusion, or they’ve stopped an attempted intrusion, but they often can’t weave together the pieces. This advisory is intended to bring together the pieces,” NSA Director of Cybersecurity Rob Joyce told The Record during a sit-down interview on the sidelines of the RSA conference.

The latest advisory details how hackers rely on compromised servers, or “hop points,” from China-based IP addresses in order to register and eventually gain access to email accounts, host command and control domains and otherwise interface with victimized networks.

After they have distanced themselves, state-linked actors go on to exploit infrastructure in internet providers and telecoms, as well as small home office and business routers manufactured by key industry providers, giving them the ability to target and attack at scale.

The perpetrators employ a variety of methods to hide their presence, bypass security features and configure victim networks to suit their needs, including pilfering data, enabling web shells for persistent access or routing data to infrastructure they themselves control.

“This work is building the foundation that they can do all of their objectives,” according to Joyce.

This is their plumbing.

not ‘holding back’

The technical advisory provides a list of the top 16 network devices most commonly used to propagate breaches, including three from telecom giant Cisco and four from data-storage hardware vendor QNAP.

However, it doesn’t name any threat actors or groups who have carried out intrusions or cite instances where the weaknesses were used to wreak havoc on a system or network.

Joyce said the agencies didn’t name specific offenses because it “doesn’t help you stop the tradecraft.”

“The intent here is to make sure that people understand how to recognize, and stop, that tradecraft,” he said. “We’ve got tradecraft that’s been going since at least 2020. We’re looking to break that cycle and we need the providers to understand that threat to break it. Knowing which APT number did it doesn’t help you break the cycle.”

Joyce also defended excluding past breaches, arguing that “some of the providers will recognize themselves inside” the laundry list of known vulnerabilities.

The advisory makes a number of suggestions to cauterize the weaknesses, including many of which have become staples of the government’s digital warnings — like keeping systems patched and updated, enabling multi-factor authentication and performing regular data backups.

Joyce insisted that the exposures cataloged in the document, all of which have been mitigated, represent a comprehensive accounting of known CVEs and that the government is not “holding back” about ongoing exploits or other potential security gaps.

The longtime NSA official also predicted how Beijing would react to the latest advisory.

“I am highly confident that they will yet again deny that they do this type of activity,” Joyce told The Record, noting Beijing has a “long track record” of conducting intrusions and massive digital espionage campaigns.

“We will continue to bring this pressure forward because it needs to stop,” he said.

Martin is a senior cybersecurity reporter for The Record. He spent the last five years at Politico, where he covered Congress, the Pentagon and the US intelligence community, and was a driving force behind the publication’s cybersecurity newsletter.

The post US businesses element the digital ‘plumbing’ utilized by Chinese language state-sponsored hackers appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

SAN FRANCISCO — US agencies on Tuesday offered new details about how Chinese state-sponsored hackers have used publicly known vulnerabilities to target internet service providers and major telecommunications firms around the globe over the last two years.

Taking advantage of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) allows malicious actors backed by Beijing to break into victim accounts and network infrastructure — via a virtual private network or another public-facing application — “without using their own distinctive or identifying malware,” the FBI , the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in an advisory.

The joint document is the latest effort by the federal government to inform the private sector about the scope of the digital threat posed by China and urge entities to take action to defend themselves.

Last week, FBI director Christopher Wray said China boasts “​​a bigger hacking program than all other nations combined,” warning that Chinese Communist Party leaders are studying the war in Ukraine for lessons about Taiwan. And last year, the US and Western allies attributed a massive assault targeting Microsoft Exchange servers to Chinese state actors.

“Businesses may understand that they’ve had intrusion, or they’ve stopped an attempted intrusion, but they often can’t weave together the pieces. This advisory is intended to bring together the pieces,” NSA Director of Cybersecurity Rob Joyce told The Record during a sit-down interview on the sidelines of the RSA conference.

The latest advisory details how hackers rely on compromised servers, or “hop points,” from China-based IP addresses in order to register and eventually gain access to email accounts, host command and control domains and otherwise interface with victimized networks.

After they have distanced themselves, state-linked actors go on to exploit infrastructure in internet providers and telecoms, as well as small home office and business routers manufactured by key industry providers, giving them the ability to target and attack at scale.

The perpetrators employ a variety of methods to hide their presence, bypass security features and configure victim networks to suit their needs, including pilfering data, enabling web shells for persistent access or routing data to infrastructure they themselves control.

“This work is building the foundation that they can do all of their objectives,” according to Joyce.

This is their plumbing.

Not ‘holding back’

The technical advisory provides a list of the top 16 network devices most commonly used to propagate breaches, including three from telecom giant Cisco and four from data-storage hardware vendor QNAP.

However, it doesn’t name any threat actors or groups who have carried out intrusions or cite instances where the weaknesses were used to wreak havoc on a system or network.

Joyce said the agencies didn’t name specific offenses because it “doesn’t help you stop the tradecraft.”

“The intent here is to make sure that people understand how to recognize, and stop, that tradecraft,” he said. “We’ve got tradecraft that’s been going since at least 2020. We’re looking to break that cycle and we need the providers to understand that threat to break it. Knowing which APT number did it doesn’t help you break the cycle.”

Joyce also defended excluding past breaches, arguing that “some of the providers will recognize themselves inside” the laundry list of known vulnerabilities.

The advisory makes a number of suggestions to cauterize the weaknesses, including many of which have become staples of the government’s digital warnings — like keeping systems patched and updated, enabling multi-factor authentication and performing regular data backups.

Joyce insisted that the exposures cataloged in the document, all of which have been mitigated, represent a comprehensive accounting of known CVEs and that the government is not “holding back” about ongoing exploits or other potential security gaps.

The longtime NSA official also predicted how Beijing would react to the latest advisory.

“I am highly confident that they will yet again deny that they do this type of activity,” Joyce told The Record, noting Beijing has a “long track record” of conducting intrusions and massive digital espionage campaigns.

“We will continue to bring this pressure forward because it needs to stop,” he said.

Martin is a senior cybersecurity reporter for The Record. He spent the last five years at Politico, where he covered Congress, the Pentagon and the US intelligence community, and was a driving force behind the publication’s cybersecurity newsletter.

The post US businesses element the digital ‘plumbing’ utilized by Chinese language state-sponsored hackers appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

SAN FRANCISCO — US agencies on Tuesday offered new details about how Chinese state-sponsored hackers have used publicly known vulnerabilities to target internet service providers and major telecommunications firms around the globe over the last two years.

Taking advantage of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) allows malicious actors backed by Beijing to break into victim accounts and network infrastructure — via a virtual private network or another public-facing application — “without using their own distinctive or identifying malware,” the FBI , the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in an advisory.

The joint document is the latest effort by the federal government to inform the private sector about the scope of the digital threat posed by China and urge entities to take action to defend themselves.

Last week, FBI director Christopher Wray said China boasts “​​a bigger hacking program than all other nations combined,” warning that Chinese Communist Party leaders are studying the war in Ukraine for lessons about Taiwan. And last year, the US and Western allies attributed a massive assault targeting Microsoft Exchange servers to Chinese state actors.

“Businesses may understand that they’ve had intrusion, or they’ve stopped an attempted intrusion, but they often can’t weave together the pieces. This advisory is intended to bring together the pieces,” NSA Director of Cybersecurity Rob Joyce told The Record during a sit-down interview on the sidelines of the RSA conference.

The latest advisory details how hackers rely on compromised servers, or “hop points,” from China-based IP addresses in order to register and eventually gain access to email accounts, host command and control domains and otherwise interface with victimized networks.

After they have distanced themselves, state-linked actors go on to exploit infrastructure in internet providers and telecoms, as well as small home office and business routers manufactured by key industry providers, giving them the ability to target and attack at scale.

The perpetrators employ a variety of methods to hide their presence, bypass security features and configure victim networks to suit their needs, including pilfering data, enabling web shells for persistent access or routing data to infrastructure they themselves control.

“This work is building the foundation that they can do all of their objectives,” according to Joyce.

This is their plumbing.

Not ‘holding back’

The technical advisory provides a list of the top 16 network devices most commonly used to propagate breaches, including three from telecom giant Cisco and four from data-storage hardware vendor QNAP.

However, it doesn’t name any threat actors or groups who have carried out intrusions or cite instances where the weaknesses were used to wreak havoc on a system or network.

Joyce said the agencies didn’t name specific offenses because it “doesn’t help you stop the tradecraft.”

“The intent here is to make sure that people understand how to recognize, and stop, that tradecraft,” he said. “We’ve got tradecraft that’s been going since at least 2020. We’re looking to break that cycle and we need the providers to understand that threat to break it. Knowing which APT number did it doesn’t help you break the cycle.”

Joyce also defended excluding past breaches, arguing that “some of the providers will recognize themselves inside” the laundry list of known vulnerabilities.

The advisory makes a number of suggestions to cauterize the weaknesses, including many of which have become staples of the government’s digital warnings — like keeping systems patched and updated, enabling multi-factor authentication and performing regular data backups.

Joyce insisted that the exposures cataloged in the document, all of which have been mitigated, represent a comprehensive accounting of known CVEs and that the government is not “holding back” about ongoing exploits or other potential security gaps.

The longtime NSA official also predicted how Beijing would react to the latest advisory.

“I am highly confident that they will yet again deny that they do this type of activity,” Joyce told The Record, noting Beijing has a “long track record” of conducting intrusions and massive digital espionage campaigns.

“We will continue to bring this pressure forward because it needs to stop,” he said.

Martin is a senior cybersecurity reporter for The Record. He spent the last five years at Politico, where he covered Congress, the Pentagon and the US intelligence community, and was a driving force behind the publication’s cybersecurity newsletter.

The post US companies element the digital ‘plumbing’ utilized by Chinese language state-sponsored hackers appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Two agencies in San Francisco that focus on women, girls and non-binary people are restructuring their relationship after almost 50 years of working together. Both expect the transition to be seamless and benefit both.

The Friends of the Commission on the Status of Women and the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women announced on November 8 that the Friends Group will no longer fund and support the work of the city council and its public oversight agency. Instead, the Friends Group would widen its focus to working with myriad organizations working to ensure equality for all women, girls and non-binary people.

“We are incredibly proud of the extensive work we have done together over the past 46 years and we will continue to work with the Commission and the Department in a new format that will better serve women and girls by focusing on whom and as we expand. ” distribute the funds we have raised, “said Verna Liza Antonio-Caba, director of the group of friends, in a press release announcing the restructuring.

In a telephone interview with the Bay Area reporter, Antonio-Caba said the decision was made amicably between the two organizations. The Friends Group is its own 501 (c) 3 community and has already launched its own programs, such as two upcoming trainings for women and non-binary individuals to learn how to negotiate with their employers about a raise or a better contract . According to the 2019 tax return, the company had revenue of approximately $ 74,000 that year.

“With a view to rebranding and redefining our mission, I hope to offer more services similar to salary negotiations,” said Antonio-Caba, a direct ally who has led the group of friends for the past five years.

Due to the changed relationship with the magistrate, the Freundeskreis is expected to agree on a new name sometime in 2022. It is unclear whether it will be broader than just using the term women.

“This was so new that the board had no chance to actually meet and find out what the new name will be,” said Antonio-Caba. “Most likely yes, we will have a new name in 2022.”

Antonio-Caba noted that providing services to transgender and non-binary people has been a focus of the group of friends for quite some time. When it was founded, these terms were not used

“It’s a 46-year-old organization and I would say that terminology has only become commonplace in the last few years,” she said.

The Friends Group was founded in 1975 when the city set up the Commission on the Status of Women. A few decades later, in 1994, the city’s voters passed a vote creating the Department of the Status of Women to carry out the work of the commission.

Last November, the Mayor of London Breed appointed progressive activist Kimberly Ellis as its new director. Ellis, former executive director of Emerge California, which trains women to run for office, tried unsuccessfully to become chairwoman of the California Democratic Party in 2017. It lost in a closely-split vote against Eric Bauman, a gay man who resigned in 2018 on charges of sexually molesting several party’s employees and younger male leaders.

Ellis took over the management of the city department a few months after Breed issued an executive order that obliged all city departments with external partner organizations to introduce uniform and stricter standards for their fundraising. It followed the federal corruption scandal involving the former head of the city’s public works department, who was accused of channeling bribes into an account owned by the nonprofit San Francisco Parks Alliance.

Part of the mayor’s directive required all city departments to formalize their relationships with a non-city organization that accepts donations on behalf of the department through letters of intent. The MOUs should be drawn up and approved by the offices of the public prosecutor’s office, the controller and, if applicable, the board or commission of the department.

Ellis told the BAR in a telephone interview that her department and circle of friends had concluded that it made no sense for her to enter into a letter of intent. Instead, the city council plans to reach an agreement with a foundation that will monitor its fundraising from outside sources.

“I want to reiterate that this was a decision made after much thought and research into the historical nature of both organizations,” Ellis said, adding that what worked between the two entities decades ago no longer is what they are today Development fits.

“Really, for us it came down to the incongruity in the structural nature of the relationship that led us to decide that we had to take a different direction by partnering with a foundation or company that was not only better structured, but better also “uniquely structured to meet the needs of a department like ours,” said Ellis.

According to their joint publication, the group of friends had given the city council a total of more than $ 260,000 in annual grants over the past 15 years. The fellowships were for specific purposes based on the department’s budgets and projections, with some funding the department’s fellowship program, including a full-time fellow with an emphasis on women’s economic security.

The department, Ellis said in the press release, owes the group of friends “thanks for their staunch support, and we congratulate them as they take this new direction, when their leadership is most needed.”

Ellis told the BAR, “We do not anticipate any negative impact on either side due to the change in the relationship between the two organizations”.

“We look forward to continuing to support the Friends in the development of their organization,” said Ellis. “We look forward to this new chapter for everyone involved.”

The department has a budget of $ 10 million for the current fiscal year and has distributed more than $ 8.5 million to local organizations over the past 18 years. Like the Friends Group, she and her commission provide services to women and girls of all ages, including those who identify as non-binary or transgender.

But it is not intended to change its name to be more expansive, said Ellis, who noted that this could be confusing as the city also has an office for transgender initiatives that reports directly to the mayor. Nonetheless, she pointed out that the department had become more inclusive in the terminology used.

For example, its website includes a statement that “all references to ‘women and girls’ include gender-expansive people (cis women and girls, trans women and girls, non-binary people, gender nonconforming people, gender-specific people, and all women or girls) . identified persons). “

“This is something I have come to be aware of during my tenure, since I have worked here in all aspects of the way we work to take the most comprehensive and inclusive approach to gender,” said Ellis.

Sophia Andary, a queer woman who sits on the commission, told the BAR that there was no need to change the official name of the city council or its regulator as trans women are women.

“Trans women are women’s time,” said Andary, co-founder of the Women’s March San Francisco. “There has to be a more inclusive language for the non-binary community so that they know where they belong. But that doesn’t have to be in the title. ”

To accommodate gender-specific involvement by the department and the commission, several members of the supervisory board, including Andary, have set up a working group to develop a mission statement that will outline how both institutions will provide services to women, girls and non-binary individuals independently their sexual orientation or gender identity. It would be in addition to the model of the two entities.

“You cannot summarize everything in one mission statement. I think a vision statement goes a little deeper, ”explains Andary. “It’s something that focuses on future goals, not just a general everyday thing, but more on getting us to that point.”

It is expected that the full commission will adopt the vision statement in the coming months.

To learn more about the Friends Group, visit their website.

You can find more information about the city office here.

Stay up to date with the latest LGBTQ political news by following the Political Notebook on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/politicalnotes

Do you have a tip about LGBTQ politics? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 829-8836 or email m.bajko@ebar.com

The Political Notes column will appear on Monday, December 6th.

Help keep the Bay Area Reporter going through these troubled times. To support local, independent LGBTQ journalism, you should become a BAR member.

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SAN JOSE (CBS SF) – Public transit drivers in the Bay Area may have noticed less freedom of movement on buses and trains in recent weeks. The number of drivers has steadily increased for many agencies, which coincides with the introduction of the coronavirus vaccine, which has increased driver confidence.

“We are very excited to see what we will see as drivers,” said Glenn Hendricks, Chairman of the VTA Board of Directors.

CONTINUE READING: Federal judge weighs in on EDD debit card hacks

The number of VTA drivers has still decreased by around 75% compared to the prepandemic. Since the beginning of the year, however, the total monthly number of VTA drivers (system-wide boarding on weekdays) has increased:

• Jan 2021 31,579
• February 2021, 37.665
• March 2021 41,425

On Monday, VTA also announced that it would relax the rules on social distancing.

“It was six feet and now moves to three feet. This will dramatically increase the capacity of our vehicles for the community, ”said Hendricks.

In the North Bay, SMART is expanding train services by ten trips on weekdays and twelve trips on Saturdays. So far there has been no service on Saturday.

CONTINUE READING: Mother mourns son killed in Oakland Chinatown shoot

“We wanted to make sure we were capturing people when they return to their lives,” said SMART CFOHeather McKillop. “So go to work and do leisure activities on the weekends. And we wanted to make sure we were a part of it, rather than having them already made their travel plans and a new routine. “

The total number of Caltrain drivers is still 9-10% of the prepandemic. However, according to Tasha Bartholomew, communications manager, the average weekly driver number has steadily increased:

• January 2021 3,056 Average number of drivers on weekdays (AWR)
• February 2021, 3,484 (AWR)
• March 2021, 3,954 (AWR)

Last week, BART recorded significant gains and reached new highs on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. The number of drivers on weekdays is up to 84% of the prepandemic, the number of weekend drivers up to 71% of the prepandemic. BART Weekday Ridership totals:

• December 2020 390,000
• Jan 2021 395,700
• February 2021 410,800
• March 2021 409,300
• Apr 2021 411,200

BART driver Brittany Bastida has noticed more passengers on the trains, adding that social distancing has become increasingly difficult on the trains.

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“Now people are standing next to me or sitting next to me or it’s like a child on their lap. I just don’t feel comfortable with it, ”said Bastida.

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