BART unveils new railcar interior design

Shop deals on ebay
Advertise with us
shop deals on amazon
Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
CHamilton

CHamilton

Engineer
AU Supporting Member
Gathering Team Member
Joined
Jul 13, 2011
Messages
5,304
Location
Seattle
BART unveils new railcar interior design


The BART car of the future could look something like this illustration that shows seats for the disabled and seniors in a different color, wipeable materials and no armrests. (Bay Area Rapid Transit)


OAKLAND -- Armrests are out. Bike racks and poles are in. Seats will be wipeable. And seniors and disabled people get their own special color.

BART passengers will get all this and more when the new railcars in the "Fleet of the Future" start rolling in the Bay Area, the agency's elected board heard Thursday.

The first test cars are in production and scheduled to arrive in June 2015. The first 110 will go into service by early 2017.
Click to expand...
 
Looks nice - except - Are those seats BARF (Bay Area Rapid Fiasco) Green? Seems like a bright red would have been a better choice...
 
Having visited many of the tech companies in the Bay Area, those colors are perfect. I love the design.
 
I have read that the new fleet of cars for BART will be a major departure in some ways from the current Rhor/Alstrom/Morrison-Knudsen fleet. Gone will be the trademark BART front-end with only one operator's cab forward window. The brushed aluminum exteriors with blue pin-striping will be replaced with colorful wrap-like materials that can be peeled off and replaced as they deteriorate from usage. And the doors will see several changes: they will no longer be the pocket sliding type seen in the existing fleet, but instead will be plug-type doors similar to those found on Light-Rail vehicles that pop out a few inches from the vehicle and rock to the sides when open. There will also be six entry/exit doors on each car (three on each side, similar to the WMATA fleet,) instead of the current four.

Rendition of the exterior from Wikipedia:

BARTRendering.png
 
Looks like minor tweaks rather than anything drastically different to me. Biggest question is- will the new cars better insulated or will we still be subjected to ear-splitting loud noises from the tracks, and especially in the Transbay Tube?

And... will the floors and seats be puke-and-poop-resistant?
 
BARTy said:
Looks like minor tweaks rather than anything drastically different to me. Biggest question is- will the new cars better insulated or will we still be subjected to ear-splitting loud noises from the tracks, and especially in the Transbay Tube?

And... will the floors and seats be puke-and-poop-resistant?
Click to expand...
If you go back and read the BART website that I cited, you'd find all the answers to your questions.
 
Over the years I've seen some odd stuff on BART that would be difficult to clean. Once I noticed a seat that appeared to be unoccupied in a fairly full car. Then I realized that someone had spread raw meat over two seats. I'm not even sure what they could done short of replacing the cushions.
 
SarahZ said:
Having visited many of the tech companies in the Bay Area, those colors are perfect. I love the design.
Click to expand...
Depends on the company. I haven't worked for a company that didn't use a fairly neutral color scheme.

Now I do remember when Silicon Graphics was the super hot company that nearly everyone in my field was trying to join. Their company color scheme was purple and teal. Once I bought a jacket because I liked it, and that happened to be about the same colors. Someone noted that it seemed pretty similar to SGI's colors. And I did interview there once, but they actually fell from a hot company to one that was a shell of itself in only a few years.
 
Maybe we just visited companies that did a recent remodel. :)

We saw Twitter:

seriously-there-are-lots-of-bright-colors-throughout-the-office.jpg


eBay:

Ebay-Offices-by-Valerio-Dewalt-8.jpg


We didn't go inside Apple, but they use those blues and greens on the exterior:

image.jpg


image.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I haven't really visited that many companies. I'm not in a position to really work with many other companies. I did visit one Intel site before, and got to walk from building to building. It was mostly boring cubes as far as the eye could see in a different neutral color for every building. However, there was one spot that got interesting with a retro 60s modernist vibe to it. Not sure what that was for, but at first I thought it was a special employee lounge.

I even visited the Sun Microsystems campus in Santa Clara a decade ago to attend a morning conference. The keynote was from Google's Eric Schmidt, who was an early employee at Sun (but not at this site). It was a bunch of older buildings and they were going more for a university campus feel than hipster techie. This was mostly in the main building there, which was an original Spanish Mission style building, with the surrounding buildings designed to mimic the architecture.
 
Sun's original campus was in Mountainview. I have spent endless hours there arguing about various details of the design of NFS back in the days of SunOS an early days of Solaris.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum
 
jis said:
Sun's original campus was in Mountainview. I have spent endless hours there arguing about various details of the design of NFS back in the days of SunOS an early days of Solaris.
Click to expand...
I had an interview at Sun in the late 90s when they were still in Mountain View. They didn't have the "it factor" that SGI had though. SGI had all the stuff including the color coordinated clothes. Their buildings looked cool, and you could recognize it instantly driving by. It felt almost like you were looking at Star Fleet Academy.

When I was at that conference at Sun's new HQ, Schmidt was reminiscing about the early days of Sun. He started with a joke about the nature of the Berkeley guys (like him and Bill Joy) vs the Stanford guys (McNealy, Khosla, and Bechtolsheim).
 
BART invites public to tour model train car

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) will hold several events this month and next to allow the public to walk through a model train car that will represent the agency's new "Fleet of the Future."

The model will be displayed at 10 events to be held April 16 through May 8 throughout the Bay Area. The public is invited to walk through the car and provide feedback on its features, BART officials said in a press release.

The tour is the final review of the car's design before manufacturing and testing by Bombardier Transportation can begin.

BART's Fleet of the Future plan calls for a new 10-car train to begin an 18-month testing period in 2015, with the agency then placing an order for the first 225 cars. The first cars are scheduled to enter service in 2017, and another 775 new cars would roll onto the system in the three years after that.
Click to expand...
 
LOL!

49ers fans upset about new BART trains featuring Seahawks colors


SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. —


San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit will be getting new train cars and 49ers fans are unhappy with the trains' interior colors.

The new BART cars feature seats in neon green and blue, which are the team colors of the 49ers’ NFC West rival, the Seattle Seahawks.

A 49ers fan started a petition on Change.org to change the plans and to choose other colors.

As of 6 p.m. Saturday, 267 supporters have signed the petition.
Click to expand...
 
Ugh, I don't like the look of this one. I prefer either a dark color, or bright red/orange/yellow. That exterior looks to me like one of those "good-looking disposables." The old BART cars looked better.

IMO best-looking rapid transit interior: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/pictures/72853/R68_2758_D_Train_Interior.JPG.

Best-looking rapid transit exteriors: http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?2870.

http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?42890

http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?128315

I think liveries with stripes down the side look far better than "wavy" liveries, unless you have equipment with a round nose. Feel free to disagree, JMO.
 
I'm resurrecting this thread to post a link to Transportation Nation's article from 9/16/14: How San Francisco Is Designing Its Metro Train of the Future

From the article:

In other words, BART asked what the redesign can do not only for its train cars but for the system as a whole. It's industrial design mixed with interior design, plus a splash of social engineering. And with the right touch, BART might even be able to hold on to that futuristic feel for another 40 years.
Click to expand...
 

Latest posts

Back
Top