1 post tagged “bart”

BART, our regional transit system, is run like a business and advertises on billboards and such to increase ridership.  Sometimes I like their ads, like the one that shows one of their commuter trains full of passengers, with the tagline: "500 MPG. Groovy!"

Recently, they started a campaign that bugs me. They're trying to say that riding the train gives you time to sit and relax instead of driving. The slogan is: "BART: Nap, Read, or Just Doodle."

Here's the problem. One of my coworkers takes BART to work each day, travelling for something like 45 minutes each way. He's a computer programmer and we rely on him a lot. It would be great if he could, oh, I don't know, USE WIFI for that additional 90 minutes of his day. He says he loads up his laptop with his morning email and then reads it on the train, or works on programming problems as much as he can while disconnected.

But wifi, which is available on all the corporate shuttles these days and now even AC Transit's cross-bay busses? Not only does BART not offer it. They think it's great to just sit and doodle. They think your time is so worthless that they can woo you with promises of sitting there idle for an hour and a half each day. I understand if offering wireless internet is difficult or expensive. But it's like they're proud of the fact that you can't get any work done on the train.

Lame.