I must admit, BART never has held much allure to me.
Coming from Seattle, I enjoyed the idea of rapid transit (or transit of any reliable sort). There was always the possibility of the future Monorail in the Emerald City, until that plan was derailed, twice. Unfortunately, Seattle had far too much area to cover and not enough focus, money or real estate to create a viable option for a large group of people.
Moving to the Bay, I was excited about the prospect of a fast people-moving system that was already in place (as well as not traveling on the same congested freeway that I would be stuck on in a car). Unfortunately, I do not live near a BART station, so it is just not convenient. I could drive to a station in Oakland, park, worry about my car being stolen and spend about the same amount of money to ride as to park. This doesn’t even take into account that taking BART (I have to be mindful of not adding an article to BART lest I be seen as a Bay Area noob) takes longer than driving to downtown San Fran on any normal day.
I have decided that what would work to lure me to ride on BART, even with the inconvenience and likelihood of car theft at Fruitvale, would be the possibility, no matter how slight, of being rescued by a super hero…

I have noticed that in numerous summer super-hero action-fests, elevated trains and subways are often highjacked by villains and the people inside are saved. Just look at Spiderman 2 or Batman Begins. I think that a commute would be made far more interesting if the train conductor were to be knocked unconscious as a plot to destroy a superhero. I am sure that in reality I would be screaming and crying, but it would make that time fly past as I fly past the stops I didn’t want to go to anyways.
How much more interesting would it be to know that if your train was hurtling out of control that you just may be saved by a superhero? Instead, you have the possibility that the BART train that you are taking deep below the Bay is the one that will be flooded as the tube is torn asunder by an earthquake. I for one would prefer to know that my train may be saved by a man (or woman) in tights instead of the pedestrian fate of drowning or being crushed.
This would also make for a great excuse for tardiness… Imagine telling you boss that your reason for being late was that your train tracks were destroyed by laser-bearing super-criminals and you were rescued from falling into a precipice by a flying green man, not that you slept-in (again).
Categories: superheroism, subways, real-life, rapid-transit, boredom, BART
Posted in musings, rapid transit, superheroism