Infested BART: Inspection Reports Reveal Serious Pest Problems

Comments (0) By Beth Winegarner Wednesday, Sep 12 2012

Trying to keep BART stations clean is akin to bailing out the Titanic with a shot glass.

Fred Noland

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For starters, you've got folks using elevators and escalators as their own personal toilets. Then there are the rats and the pigeons, skittering and swooping and excreting willy-nilly. It's enough to drive a station agent bonkers, as we discovered recently when we examined a stack of station inspection reports.

June 12, 24th Street station: "RAT PROBLEMS MAJOR RAT PROBLEMS."

June 18: "CAN WE JUST SIMPLY GET SOME MORE RAT TRAPS PLEASE."

June 19: "RATS RATS RATS."

June 25: "Greeted this morning by the residential rat. Then a few early morning passengers (older females) were startled (she says it nearly gave her a heart attack) by two (2) rats (not mice). Rats running up down the stairs playing in the plaza (her words)."

June 26: "RATS ARE STILL TAKING OVER THIS STATION"

Twice a day, BART station agents report how well service workers are keeping the concourse, platform, stairs, and conveyances clean. There are 20 separate chores each day, from wiping escalator rails to mopping platforms, says BART spokesman Jim Allison.

Station agents file these reports to provide an objective look at service workers' performance. But the demands of coping with tense BART customers can leave agents feeling less than copacetic — hence the theatrics, Allison says. "Some are obviously upset about what's going on at that station, and maybe emotions are running high when they write the reports."

While investigating BART's elevator-tinkler woes, SF Weekly requested a month's worth of inspection reports for San Francisco stations. The results revealed a BART computer glitch preventing 13 days' worth of inspections being reported (which they fixed once we inadvertently alerted them to it), 22 soiled elevators in the remaining 17 days, and a wildlife population that would pique Jeff Corwin's interest.

And it isn't just the rats.

On June 5, at Powell, the agent reported, "Pigeons are nesting, having babies throughout the station." There was so much pigeon poop, the report stated, that passengers were slipping around in it.

Throughout the month, agents at Colma station begged for more pigeon-proofing measures, pigeon-dung cleanup, and "DO NOT FEED THE PIGEONS" signs, which are not standard in BART stations. Rats are not an ongoing problem, and when they arise, BART hires an exterminator to set out traps, Allison says. Pigeons, on the other hand, are regular denizens of the transit system, prompting plenty of counter-measures.

"Pigeons are pretty resourceful birds, and they find a ways around a lot of the anti-pigeon measures," including nets, spikes and barriers, he says. He doubted anti-feeding signs would be added: "There is probably more important information we need to convey to customers."