On Monday, BART updated the fare gates at all of the agency’s train stations in the Bay Area with a new chime that will help riders who rely on auditory cues to navigate during their trips.
The new tone will sound when a rider holds their fare media — such as their Clipper Card or bank card — for an additional second after a gate opens and is intended to be more audible over other background noises.
The agency said the change was made to phase out outdated technology and improve the experience for blind and low-vision travelers. People should listen for an “ascending chime” when entering and a “descending chime” when exiting a station.
BART’s Director of Customer Access and Accessibility Ryan Greene-Roesel is a musician and developed the new chimes on her piano. The agency said its sound engineers then put the chords into a digital program that let the team generate various iterations before a final selection was made.
“We hope customers and station staff enjoy the new tones as we continue to work hard to improve the BART experience for all of our riders,” Greene-Roesel said.
For more info on accessibility at BART, visit bart.gov/accessibility.
Not too sure on the ridership of those with visual disabilities but I am thinking that is a really low fraction of the already low ridership! Feeling that if they want to increase ridership hire more police to ride on the cars to keep people feeling safe as well as patrole the waiting areas and parking garage to keep out the criminals and homeless…just a thought!?!
Original design of gates did not include audio cues for blind
and visibility impared ? ? ? ? ? ?
I thought that BART was broke! They should be focusing their time on cutting expenses.
Why?! Every station has an overpaid gate agent who is mostly on the phone. Make the agent earn his/her wage by making help blind and low vision rider. Or better yet, replace gate agents with bart police officers at each stations so rider feel safe🤷♂️. I mean there isn’t much too do as station agents since most riders know how to ride bart and the visitors can navigate the system with the phone. I ride bart everyday and I rarely need the agent help ( I need them to reset the clipper card maybe 5 times in the last 6 years)