Answering Nature’s Call, BART Finally Reopens Powell Street Bathrooms

When you gotta go, you gotta go. Starting next week, when nature calls, BART passengers at San Francisco’s Powell Street Station will finally get a hall pass for the bathroom.

Back in October, news broke that BART’s long-closed underground public restrooms—which have been off-limits to riders for two decades—would eventually reopen, it was just a question of when. On Friday, BART made the long awaited announcement that the first Powell Street Station underground restroom will reopen on Weds., Feb. 2.

“It’s a big deal,” said Rebecca Saltzman, president of BART’s board of directors.

According to Saltzman, the underground loos were shuttered in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. and have remained shut ever since. Proposals to reopen the restrooms have come up over the years, but it wasn’t until last year that the board had the support to actually move forward with a plan.

In the coming years, Saltzman is hopeful that all of the public transit network’s underground restrooms will reopen. All of them need to be remodeled for both safety and accessibility purposes, and some have to be moved further away from entrances and exits.

According to a BART spokesperson, the transit agency is planning to mark the occasion with an official gathering on Wednesday, but details on that reopening event have yet to be announced.