BART swaps out stinky old seats

There’s nothing quite like 40 years worth of ass to scare you into standing up for your entire subway ride.

The frightening prospect of lingering fecal bacteria finally prompted BART to get off its big metal bum and start replacing its gnarly cloth seats. The first fruit borne by a $1.9 million effort to replace the ’70s-era wool seats rolled through the Transbay Tube Tuesday, bringing BART officials, media and even a few passengers along for the ride.

The first four re-upholstered trains still had that new-seat smell as media and BART officials rode into The City from Oakland. The rest of the 100 redone cars will hit the tracks over the next month.

BART rider Tifia Napier-Morales told the Bay Citizen she doesn’t have to avoid sitting down on the old seats anymore:

“They always felt hot and sticky and worn. They’ve had a lot of good use.”

Riders will get a chance to voice their opinions on the new seats before they are deployed into 100 more of the transit agency’s 669-car fleet.

Even with the upgrades, more than two-thirds of BART trains will still rock the funky old seats until a fresh fleet of BMW-designed trains arrive around 2018.

Which means newspapers may still have a few more years of useful service before serving no purpose whatsoever.

Jesse Garnier

Jesse Garnier is the editor and founder of SFBay. A Mission District native, he also teaches journalism as associate professor at San Francisco State University.