By Darrell
I was walking up Allston Way, going to San Francisco to see a friend. A huge novelty of living in the Bay Area is that you really don’t need a car in this region since our subway system is extremely convienent—serving 400,000 riders each day. I walked by the crowd of people and started down the pit of stairs—then along with a couple others—staring blankly at the closed doors.
It was so unfamilar, and as I awkwardly arose back from the stairway, I saw the crowds of people in a muddled hurry boarding the AC Transit. Mass amounts of people seemed dazed, the bart strike of 2013 was actually happening and people were stuck in their locations. There were news report of the massive cluster of cars and rendered useless busses moving only an inch every half-an-hour on the Bay Bridge. The Bart strike had ruined the automobile commute as well.
This isn’t the first time transit system commute strikes have happened, but the Bart is unique because it’s a public sector service and the workers—unlike most other systems—were not banned from striking. Bart and the worker union seem to be miles away from coming even close to a fair agreement, both demands too drastic for one another. Their argument is that while profits and ridership has risen drastically, Bart’s worker’s income hasn’t risen much at all. Bart however argues that their income is already in the 60,000 dollar range, couple ten-thousands above the average income of americans.