Underground v BART

After two years of commuting on BART every day from Berkeley to San Francisco, I have to say that I'm a fan.  Sure, it can be expensive, but so is parking in SF, in addition to the bridge toll.  And for traveling straight from San Francisco to Bay Point, it's just so simple.  The only reasons I've found for not liking BART is that it doesn't go to enough places.  I want to be able to go to Golden Gate Park, or northwest SF without having to jump on a bus for another 45 minutes.  I want to take BART all the way to Antioch, and not take the dinky additional train they're building instead of the electric BART system.

And this is quite simply why the London Underground rules.  You can go anywhere in the city, and I mean anywhere.  You almost don't even need to plan out a schedule, because if you wander off a few blocks in any direction, you can almost always find another glowing red ring signalling another station.

The other thing that rocks?  Trains come every three minutes.  Three minutes.  On BART, they come every fifteen, and for people like me who are crazy about not standing and waiting for the train if I don't have to, that is significant.

One thing that BART does have that the Underground doesn't?  The timed transfer (when it works).  In order to transfer trains on the Underground, you need to travel up two sets of stairs and walk around a few tunnels.  But that doesn't really matter because if the train isn't waiting for you, you can wait two minutes instead of fourteen for the next one.  It's a thing of beauty.

Both systems have their own free newspapers that hit the highlights, and I have to say that I enjoy the crosswords in both.  Both also don't stay open very late, so those who are planning for a long night usually have to catch the night bus or a cab to get back, which isn't so tough in London, but is kind of tough in SF if you're stuck on the wrong side of the bridge, which severely limits your options.

And I have to say that earlier today when I realized that I'd been waiting for my train to France for two hours at the wrong station, the Underground got me there.  There was some panicked leg jingling on the ride over, naturally, but the trip across town was short enough to let me run for the train.  I'm quite positive I would have missed it if I had to wait ten minutes for BART.

There are a couple of negatives to the London Underground that make it a bit sketchy, primarily the questionable fog/smoke that hangs in the air when you look down to the opposite end of the station.  It's decently thick, and when I think about how I'm breathing that in every trip, it makes me wonder.  This may be a BART issue too to some extent, at least in Embarcadero, but it's definitely not as noticeable and there are a lot more above ground stations to clear it out.  And on BART, you don't end up with black snot at the end of the day like you do on the Underground.  If your mucus is trapping all that, what is it missing?