Oakland A’s Fans Helped Push BART Ridership to Heights Not Seen Since 2020

BART is enjoying its best ridership month since the start of the pandemic, thanks in part to the return of crowds taking transit to the Oakland Coliseum for the A’s final homestand.

The 204,265 fare-gate exits reported Tuesday mark the first time the figure has topped 200,000 since March 12, 2020 — days before COVID-19 stay-at-home orders were imposed in the Bay Area.

Late summer and early fall are typically the strongest periods for Bay Area transit ridership, including for BART. Before this month, its post-pandemic daily ridership peaks were recorded in September 2023 — with just over 192,000 trips — immediately after the agency introduced a new schedule.

This month’s uptick has beaten those numbers several times, and last week, BART also set a new high for weekly ridership since the pandemic started, with 1.15 million people riding the system. The number of trips reported for the first 24 days of September is about 11% higher than during the same period last year.

In the past, BART’s September–October numbers have gotten a boost from sporting and entertainment events at the Coliseum, including A’s, Raiders and Warriors games. But with two of those three teams leaving Oakland five years ago and A’s attendance falling into a prolonged funk, traffic at the Coliseum station has declined.

But A’s attendance was strong for the series with the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants last month. And fans have turned out in large numbers — many taking BART — for the team’s final week in Oakland.

BART data shows that the impact of increased attendance is dramatic. The number of people recorded entering and leaving the Coliseum station since last Friday totals 57,000, compared to 20,000 for the same five days the previous week.

But even with the current surge, BART’s average daily ridership this month is still only 46.4% of its pre-pandemic baseline. The good September numbers also come after an extended lull in BART’s comeback, as ridership actually fell in June and August compared to the previous year.

Overall transit use across the Bay Area is still well below pre-pandemic levels for nearly all of the region’s 27 transit agencies. The exceptions: The North Bay’s SMART train system, which is carrying more riders now than it did before COVID-19, and San Mateo County’s SamTrans, which is carrying about the same number of passengers as it did before stay-at-home orders.