Parking at Fremont BART
Sometime in the past few months the Fremont BART station started requiring people to pay $1 for parking. While the fee itself isn’t so bad, the system seems pretty ill-conceived.
Rather than using a normal paid parking system with parking meters or with entry or exit fees, riders are required to remember their parking space number and to pay at a machine inside the station. The system is so confusing that there are at least three extra employees to guide people through the process: one person in the lot shouting at people to remember their parking space numbers, another person inside the station directing people to the parking validation machines, and a third person to explain to people how to use the machines. And that’s not including any people needed to enforce the parking dues.
The parking machines also introduce a bottleneck since everyone entering the station must wait to use them. No longer can I have a spare ticket handy in my wallet and dash straight from my car to a departing train.
Admittedly the parking lot at the Fremont BART station wasn’t designed for this sort of thing, but I wouldn’t expect retrofitting it to be too costly since the lot has limited entrances and exits, and areas of the lot are designated for buses and for passenger drop-off and pick-up already.
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Yeah, they had those at my train station near where I grew up in New Jersey. Take some getting used to, but much cheaper than setting up automatic fences and booths. Once you get used to it, its fine.
Actually back in NJ, the payment thing was really ghetto. It was just a big box full of numbered slots where you stuff a dollar bill in.
— Ben @ September 16, 2007, 3:54 pm (PT)
yeah, we have those all over westchester county, and it took me a while to get used to them too when i first moved up here. now, they’re actually convenient sometimes because i can add more time to my “meter” without having to go all the way back to my spot. it is kinda annoying when i forget my stall number before i get to the pay station, though. heh.
— janice @ September 24, 2007, 12:32 pm (PT)