Bay Area Rapid Transit kept it moving during Sunday’s busy San Francisco Pride celebration despite an evening skirmish that briefly closed a Downtown San Francisco station.
“BART on Sunday carried 140,006 trips. That’s 6,000 more trips than Pride ’22 and 117% of pre-COVID ridership projections for a June Sunday,” the agency tweeted Monday morning.
“It was BART’s busiest Sunday since the arrival of the pandemic. Thanks to everyone who rode BART to Pride!”
The transit agency’s post-pandemic peak remains this month’s total of 189,716 riders on June 13.
The transit agency opened its doors at 8 a.m. Sunday, running extra trains to accommodate parade crowds and urging riders to use Clipper Cards on cell phones or smartwatches.
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The agency had anticipated its heaviest ridership would come in Downtown San Francisco at its Embarcadero station from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and its Civic Center station from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. for events including the parade and the People’s March.
After heated tempers on the Civic Center Station platform around 7:10 p.m. led to fights involving pepper spray that led to a partially shattered train window on at least one car, BART staff closed the station from about 7:20 p.m. until 8 p.m.
A BART spokesman confirmed late Monday morning that police arrested a 20-year-old Antioch man on that station’s platform on suspicion of an assault charge. The man, who did not possess valid media, was issued a prohibition order and booked into San Francisco County Jail.
Trains also rode through West Oakland Station for what BART called crowd mitigation from about 7:55 p.m. until nearly 8:30 a.m.
According to BART ridership statistics (opens in new tab), 147,545 riders used the system Friday to reach gatherings including the Trans March, hitting 36% of baseline capacity, while 110,343 riders used BART on Saturday to attend events including the Dyke March, hitting 71% of the system’s baseline capacity.