Man Successfully Reaches New Low at Millbrae BART


Photo by Charles Haynes

Transit etiquette and decent human behavior, yet again, flew out the window at Millbrae BART, dropping the chivalry index to a record low.

No, seriously. This was my morning: BART was running at least 15 minutes late to Millbrae, so people on my BART train making the Millbrae Caltrain connection were getting visibly antsy. It looked like we would miss the bullet train, after which the local Caltrain only comes every hour. As the Millbrae BART train pulled in, we could see that a Caltrain was already waiting at the opposite platform, but we would have to go upstairs to cross the platform and then down another set of stairs to catch it.

The BART train stops and everybody makes a mad scramble to the fare gates. As I walked up to the faregate and reached out to scan my Clipper card, a young man (Silicon Valley type, corporate backpack), leaped over two other people to jump in front of me to scan his Clipper card.

His Clipper card didn’t scan so the fare gate was still closed, so he hoisted himself up to jump the gate, kicking up his feet to nick me right in the shin, breaking skin (I was wearing a skirt and heels on account of the great weather today). No apologies.

None of us made the train.

How about this for an etiquette rule: don’t take fellow riders out at the knees (or the shins). Now does anyone have a Band-Aid for me?

6 comments

  • Marcie

    A guy jumped out of the inside seat on BART in his haste to leave the train and knocked my friend’s laptop to the ground, shattering the screen. No apology of course since he made it off the train! Ugh – your shin seems even more awful somehow…

  • asdf

    Seems more worthy of a tweet or facebook status update than a blog post….

    • Sounds more like yet another fucking douchebag guy being a total selfish asshole, and winding up hurting people (Eugenia) physically while cause an untold number of people to miss their train. Yay, MEEEEEEE!!!!!!! But if you can find a way to get that 140 characters, “asdf,” well then. Hats off to you.

  • Dexter Wong

    May that guy get stuck in those nasty Clipper irregularities!

  • Devin

    Millbrae station’s a near-perfect example of transit systems that can’t cooperate on transfers. I did that scramble many times – made it about one time in three. Seldom had to deal with the same level of douchebaggery as in this instance, but then I tended to ride at the end of the train with the fare evaders who knew the blind spot in BART’s surveillance coverage on the south gates.

  • andrew

    Since the *whole point* of the Millbrae Caltrain/BART multi-modal station complex is to facilitate transfers, you’d think Caltrain would wait for BART when the latter is running a little late.

    Also, douchey transit hipsters are douchey. I hope you weren’t badly injured.

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