BART – Powell St Station

This is the main BART station for central San Francisco. Right in the middle of downtown, Union Square and Westfield Mall. It is usually very crowded and all walks of life pass thru here. There are frequently homeless people either asleep in the corridors, or pan handling at the entrances. There are also musicians or singers at the entrance with all levels of capability.

When you don’t ride subways often (Charlotte has a light rail), you forget about the smell. Well, Powell Street brought that smell back to me in spades. Wow. As well, at least three people sleeping/​lying on the ground in the station which is unexpected at 8:00 AM on a Monday holiday.
Once past that, I was able to negotiate the ticket purchase system easily enough (though I had to pay more when I left at SFO), get my ticket and get through the turnstile well enough. Signage for the direction towards the airport was clear though it could have been clearer.
The escalator down to the platform was fine and there were places to sit and wait for the train on the platform.
The Powell Street BART Station is on all of the four major lines, between Montgomery Street and Civic Center.

This about BART in general. Why does it have so many delays!!! It’s 2016 for crying out loud. If we can fly a man to the moon, snap chat, have IPhones with endless telecommunication features… Then why the hell cant we get cleaner, more efficient service. There are endless equipment problems, track issues, medical emergencies that causes major delays.
Hire better engineers, qualified operators, and revamp the whole system altogether.

One of the worst subway stations I have seen in the world. Its a home for the homeless. Don’t be amazed if you find it weird smelling.

Die Powell Street Station ist eine der Hauptstation in San Francisco. Super zentral gelegen und direkt gegenüber der Westfield San Francisco Mall.
Von hier starten alle Linien des Metro-​Netzes in alle Richtungen.
Tickets kauft man an den entsprechenden Schaltern oder am Automaten, wenn man konkret weiß wohin es geht. Tageskarten gibt es auch. die lieben bei rund 12 Dollar. Was für SF günstig ist, da man das komplette Netz nutzen kann.
Sowohl die Station, als auch die Wagons sind sauber und gepflegt. Das Publikum ist entspannt und man muss keine Sorge haben, hier von komischen Gestalten angequatscht zu werden.
Das U-​Bahn-​Netz kann man ohne grosse Sorgen nutzen. Sicherheit wird grossgeschrieben.
Demnächst gibt es auch eine direkte Verbindung an den SF Airport!

If I could give negative reviews I would. During the summer months the homeless problem wasn’t such and issue, but now that it is cold and rainy it is sad to see the quantity of people calling Powell St. station their home. This speaks not so much to BART’s inability to keep people out of the walkways during off hours, but our state’s failure to provide enough services to help those in need (whatever their issue, homelessness, addiction, mental illness).
BART PROBLEM!!!
Issues that BART needs to address immediately:
1) Vagrants using the station as a personal outhouse. The odor of urine and feces is overwhelming and often needs to be physically avoided as to NOT step in. This is not only disgusting, it has to be a major health & safety violation. I can’t believe the city allows this.
On that note, as I was headed home a few days ago I saw a man taking a SHIT into the abyss that is now the escalator that leads up to Market near the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf café. WHY IS THIS BEING ALLOWED!!!
I have heard that working escalators have been shut down in the past because of human excrement clogging the gears and such. In this instance BART has failed to fix an escalator that has been broken for at least 3-​months, and is now being used on a daily basis as a place for people to relieve themselves. I now avoid the Powell St. station whenever possible because I cannot erase the image of seeing that man mid-​poop as I was descending into the station.
2) Fix the GD escalators already!
3) Close off the entrance to the station when trains are not running.
4) Get the vagrants out of the station during business hours, at a minimum. Recently a man, who was either high or had mental disease, was pacing back and forth flinging a bottle filled with lotion or shampoo as he was screaming nonsense. Fortunately, there was an even more aggressive BART rider on the phone whose conversation seemed to startle him. I took the opportunity to draft off that person’s crazy and make it to the train in safety.
I think it is disgusting that BART increases its fares yet seemingly does nothing to fix these issues. I feel like BART constantly holds Bay Area residents hostage, being a monopoly transit system, with their strikes, delays because of people on the tracks. Obviously, something needs to change, but this is up to the administration as always. I feel for the BART workers who have to deal with this nonsense on a daily basis, but the organization needs to do something to improve customer experience as it is long overdue!

The name itself is a joke: BART is not rapid, by any stretch of the imagination. It is slow, always delayed, and dirty. Every day there is a medical emergency, or some «police activity», or a mechanical issue. BART is also delayed when it rains, cause, you know, rain is bad for the tracks??? The station agents are rarely useful, and often rude.

Busy BART station located just off Union Square.
There are stairs, as well as escalators. And a collection of people who will likely ask you for money. More people have asked for money inside this station than out on the street.
It is a busy station, so I always feel safe. There is staff present and sometimes community ambassadors to help.
The only thing that would make this station better is more machines to purchase tickets. There’s often a queue, so give yourself ample time.

Nasty, I just saw this random lady walk by me and went straight to the back to take a piss. Nasty. This just happened by the end of the Yellow platform.

This stop used to be my first in San Francisco, Its still a good station. There is a tourist office to check what is going on in town, flyers on tours and tourist shops, and they sell MUNI Passes (there is also a kiosk up top or just buy a clipper in the station).
It is a big station with both MUNI and Bart it has its own entrance in the Galleria. There are lots of exits around the area. Up on top there is a streetcar stop and a cable car stop.
The station is well located Union Square and all the shopping around it are all close by. The main exit into the square always seem to have lots of locals needing funds.

Urine is the scent of everyday of the light rail. Also many down on there luck people each time i come through. That’s the light of light rail travel in a metropolis. And that adds to the color of the Bay area. Powell street is par for the course, but don’t have restrooms and is very crowded during the commute hours. Which means it’s a chance to make more friends, or at least try to brighten someones day. I want a damned free ride for giving so much!

The Powell Bart /​Muni station is a hot mess! If I’m not trying to avoid being pooped on by pigeons, then I have to step around the strange smells from the homeless lying about on the floor toward the far stairwells (if I see one more booty hanging out) and avoid being hectored and harangue by people trying to sell me Bart tickets that they got using stolen credit card information.
Outside on the Powell Street side of the Bart /​Muni station I have to zip past the people shaking their cups and asking for change. Then watch out for «would be criminals» waiting for the unsuspecting, moment to pickpocket or otherwise get their hands-​on my goods.
Now I am sympathetic to the plight of the less fortunate. However, something has to be done to clean up the state of the Powell Street station.

This BART station seems to be in the center of the city. Therefore, it seems like the most crowded. Located perfectly in the middle of Market Street are many shops and restaurants. This stop is the closes one to Union Square.

This Bart/​Muni station is alright until you actually need to get help from attendants from either muni or Bart. I had a practically bad encounter on a Sunday afternoon with a MUNI attendant when I asking what train to take. Apparently «interrupting» her was not an option, and I proceeded to get berated by her for doing nothing except trying to ask what the difference between the bus lines and the train lines were.
Holy poo. If you cannot handle a simple question without flipping out, how the heck are you even an attendant. I feel for any future lost souls who simply want to find their way home. Good riddance.

Argh! BART should take a page out of the Osaka subway system playbook. The plaza area is pretty filthy. Not having a work in elevator for mobility challenged patrons is unfortunately inconsiderate.

One of the better and cleaner BART stations. Its location next to Westfield Mall makes it a nice place to get off when coming into the city. It tends to get more crowded at the Montgomery and Embarcadero BART stations, so this is the last station you might be able to get a seat on when traveling across the bay from SF to East Bay.
Some of the machines don’t take credit card, so keep that in mind.

This is the most convenient station to the San Fran Visitors Information Centre, if you want to buy a MUNI pass or another tourist-​related pass.
It’s also close to Union Square or Westfield San Francisco Centre.
Convenience is everything. Machines work, and there hasn’t been any trouble when I’ve been there. If it’s not overly clean, you haven’t been on the trains or in the stations in New York City or Philadelphia.

Speaking as an outsider, I really didn’t see anything to complain about at all within this BART stop. That being said, I only used it twice haha.
The location itself was great for us since our hotel was only 3 blocks up and has tons of cafes and food stops close for when you’re hungry coming straight from the airport.
Now here’s the thing, yes there are a ton of homeless people just hanging outside the station ready to serenade you with a little song and dance so that you flip them a coin so they can head over to the Tenderloin area and get a fix BUT they aren’t all that aggressive. Compared to the East Vancouver, Canada area where I am originally used to growing up around it’s makes you feel like you’re in Disneyland. Our skytrain (that’s what it’s called in Vancouver) is so much dirtier and smellier in the sketchy stops than the BART is… so I personally found the Powell station pleasant.
In the end, I don’t know if I was oblivious to how sketchy or nasty this specific stop was or if it’s just so much dirtier at home to complain but all I can say is that I was happy there wasn’t a river of pee running through the place like there usually is at home.

Long overdue review of my main Muni and Bart station.
Powell station is probably the Muni and Bart stop most visitors go to. It’s the stop of Westfield Mall, Union Square, Metreon, Yerba Buena, and Moscone Center, to name a few.
There’s entrances for this station that brings you straight to the bottom entrances of Westfield Mall. One side of it is next to the Starbucks and the other side is the side where the shoe shops (sorry, can’t remember which ones they are exactly).
There are a few homeless people that wait by the middle entrance by the stairs and there a few that sleep in the long hallway. Some times there’s people that walk around the ticket dispensers asking for change.
This station randomly has people performing here. I’ve seen people singing, playing guitar, and even a group of singers performing in the middle. It’s never a dull moment here.

The stations in general are not filled with trash and it looks in order and neat. But they smell like urine, and a very strong urine. they really need to do something about that awful smell. They also need better signs of where you are in the tunnels on the second level. It is a maze and as many times as I have come to powell station I was lost. I ended up at the other end of the station a block away from where I wanted to be. Although it smelled soooooooo bad that I wanted to get out immediately!

The Powell Station is by-​far my favorite station out of all the BART stations altogether.
You may ask why so? The answer is simple: it’s conveniently located right next to the Westfield shopping center (DUH! Why else?!)
No really, I believe that this station is well-​maintained (for the most part) because of the amount of tourists that come in and out of this station on a daily basis. Colorful tiles, advertisements alongside the train tracks, and random art on the walls around the station.
If you’re having the itch for a coffee on the way to work/​mall/​train (note: you cannot bring food/​beverages without a sealed container in the train), there’s a Starbucks conveniently beside the entrance from Powell station to Westfield Shopping Center.
BEWARE: You might be randomly selected by a tourist (that may speak about 5% English) and asked to direct them to where the Moscone Center/Fisherman’s Wharf/​Shopping area/​Union Square etc. is located. These questions is not for the faint of heart and should not be answered by non-​locals as it may confuse the tourists even more.
However, If you feel like you can be somewhat beneficial in any way, this question can be best answered by:
1. Not responding back in slang English (when you clearly know they don’t speak an ounce of English); if you speak their language, it would be suggested to speak back in that preferred language; or
2. Circling areas/​tracking a route on their map with a pen. or their pen (if they’re smart enough to carry one).
If you’re totally freaked out a tourist may approach you, just proceed to do either of the following:
1. Act as if you’re in a rush to a random destination;
2. Pretend to take a call; or
3. Insert noise-​cancelling ear buds in ears (highly preferred).
If it’s your first time taking BART there are a couple things you need to know:
1. Between the hours of 7:30 a.m.-8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.-7:30 p.m., everyone is in a rush to get to work or go home.
–Don’t get offended if you’re pushed/​shoved in/​out of the train if you’re a slow-​poke. (Speedy on up!) We’re simply trying to get home to be with our families/​pets/​partner (s)
2. If you plan to make a one-​way trip, pay exact cash/​debit card.
–You will not get refunded any extra cash you added to your BART card.
3, Make sure to bring noise-​cancelling ear buds if you’re noise-​sensitive.
–It can get annoyingly loud as BART passes through the underground tunnels.

Naja, né S-​Bahn Station halt. Die Anzeigetafeln sind aktuell und zeigen an, welcher Zug wann (sekundengenau) mit wie vielen Wagen wohin rollt. Gibt eh nur zwei oder drei Linien. Beim Fahrkartenkauf kann es sein, dass hilfreiche Menschen bei der Bedienung des Automaten helfen, und dafür gerne das Wechselgeld behalten wollen. Da muss man aufpassen, dass man nicht zu viel Tip gibt…
Die Station ist sehr zentral gelegen und man ist gleich an der Market Street, am Union Square und in der Nähe vieler Hotels. Grenzt aber im Osten auch an den Stadtteil Tenderloin, in den man nicht unbedingt möchte.
Es gibt nen Fahrstuhl und auch Rolltreppen, wer mit schwerem Gepäck unterwegs ist, muss nicht schleppen. Man ist halt gleich mitten im Gewusel und sollte sich darauf einstellen, geich angequatscht zu werden. Aber nur die üblichen Schnorrer, keineswegs aggressiv, kann man locker handlen.