BART’s fare gates were built to stop evasion. Now they’ll sell ads

By Rachel Swan | San Francisco Chronicle (TNS)

BART was built to move commuters, yet increasingly, it’s made them a captive audience for advertising.

Images of fashion models, wearable tech and tantalizing vacation homes flash across screens positioned over the third rail. Snappy marketing copy mingles with phrases redolent of AI slop. Last month the agency even rolled out a shrink-wrapped train decked in cute “BARTy” mascots — a temporary skin that could eventually be replaced by tech company logos.

But nothing quite matches the ingenuity of BART’s latest concept for ad placement: renting space on the fare gates.

“We are always looking for new advertising inventory,” said Dave Martindale, BART’s director of marketing and research. “And the new fare gates provided a great opportunity with the larger doors, the clear panels, the nice rectangular shape.”

Planners had in fact realized, back when BART was choosing a fare gate design in 2019, that Plexiglass panels could be a perfect ad canvas. That was well before the pandemic and subsequent rise of remote work that tanked ridership and sent Bay Area transit operators into a death spiral.

Initially, officials had viewed fare gate ads as a creative revenue generator. Now they could play a much bigger role in the system’s survival.

Engineers developed the idea by sticking decals on model fare gates in BART’s laboratory, deep in the bowels of Lake Merritt Station. The mockups had a generic, music-themed graphic featuring a boom box and various band instruments. Slogans accompanying the pictures ranged from the inspirational (“Find what moves you”) to the more directly transit-related (“More fun, less traffic”).

On Tuesday, BART officials began testing these visual displays in the wild. Staff on the marketing team decided to try their invention at 19th Street Station in Oakland, a bustling transfer point in the heart of the rail system. They decorated an array of fare gates with the prototype decals, combining the illustrations and catch phrases with a “BARTable” logo.

Crews in orange vests pasted large, vertical banners onto the panels and consoles of each fare gate, transforming the machines’ look entirely. The gates had drawn some of their appeal from their plain, oblong severity — something close to an airport security checkpoint. Plastered in advertisements, they became vibrant and busy, less civic infrastructure than a teenager’s bedroom wall covered with magazine cut-outs.

Appraising the work, Martindale seemed satisfied. “This will be another option for advertisers to get the eyeballs of BART riders,” he said, crossing his arms on his chest as he watched the new decals go up.

Martindale and the executives at Outfront Media, BART’s contracted ad vendor, view the fare gates as ideal spaces for tech companies or banks to promote their brands, especially now that riders are tapping phones or debit cards to enter the system.

“I could see this welcoming conference attendees,” BART spokesperson Alicia Trost mused. “Such as Dreamforce.”

New advertising platforms are undoubtedly vital for BART as the agency confronts what could be a cataclysmic financial crisis. Absent a tax bailout from voters in November, BART will face deficits of up to $400 million annually and may have to eviscerate service. Last month the Metropolitan Transportation Commission published a financial efficiency review of BART and other transit agencies, urging them to find new sources of income that are not tied to fares. Advertisements on gate panels are a perfect example, Trost said.

Besides 19th Street, six other stations will showcase decal art during the test period. They include Downtown Berkeley, Concord, Dublin/ Pleasanton, Fremont, 16th Street/Mission, and Daly City. Decals publicizing “tap-and-ride” — contactless payments with a card — will appear at San Francisco International Airport as well as Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport for people disembarking from the BART airport connector.

“It creates a real storyboard,” said Cynthia Beiler, area vice president of Outfront, noting agencies could try many imaginative designs on the blank color palette. Big soda cans, for example.

At present, Martindale is not sure which businesses will bite, or how much BART will charge for the ad real estate. The agency also has no precise way to assess how riders engage with the decals, beyond the unscientific evidence at 19th Street Station: people curiously jerking their heads to see what was different about the gates. The more immediate objective, Martindale said, is to determine how well a vinyl poster can survive on a fare gate, a surface scraped daily by backpacks and briefcases.

Agency staff anticipate the ads will drum up badly needed income without disrupting the station environment. Given the number of ads that already flicker from concourses and platforms, riders may barely notice one more surface for sale.

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