Heads up, gate-hoppers: BART is installing their supposedly evasion-proof Next Generation Fare Gates at Civic Center Station starting today, hoping to stem fare evasion at one of their most notorious stations.

The top brass at the transit agency BART have been chasing their dream of evasion-proof fare gates for about five years now, and they finally settled on a design in April 2023. We got a first glimpse of these new gates in November of last year, and they were installed at West Oakland Station in late December. An SFGate reporter put them to the test and gave an early review that yes, the new gates are pretty much evasion-proof.

The gates will be installed systemwide, so BART installed the first of these new gates at Civic Center Station at that station’s elevator level this past spring. But that’s only one gate at a station with four gates. So now, as KPIX reports, BART is installing the evasion-proof fare gates at the rest of Civic Center station, starting today.  

“On Thursday, July 18, BART will begin replacing the existing fare gates on the concourse level of Civic Center Station with new Next Generation Fare Gates,” the transit agency said in a press release this week. “Installing this new array is expected to take several weeks to complete.”

They refer to three arrays altogether at the Civic Center station, so it’s “several weeks” times three. As seen above, they're starting with the yellow-outlined gate (“Array 1”) closest to Seventh Street. Once that’s complete, they’ll replace the other two, one at a time.

BART has already announced the next eight stations that will get the new gates. And a Thursday Bay City News report notes that the next three stations getting them will be the Fruitvale, 24th Street Mission, and Richmond stations.

It’s definitely raised some eyebrows that the new gates are going to cost BART an estimated $90 million to install systemwide. But there’s roughly $350 million in state and regional subsidies contingent on BART addressing its fare evasion problem. So just by installing them, BART could be able to pay for the gates if they’re installed by the agreed-upon timeline of the end of 2025.  

Related: BART Announces the Next Eight Stations Getting Those ‘Evasion-Proof’ Fare Gates [SFist]

Image: @SFBART via Twitter