Last night, the person in charge of the official San Francisco BART Twitter account lost it. In 57 tweets, the account espoused truth and honesty, and pretty much admitted what everyone in the Bay Area already knows: the crumbling institution kinda sucks.
Now, running social media accounts for well-known public entities, be they people, organisations, or things, is difficult and often miserable. But when that entity is an oft-maligned public transportation system, the task becomes even harder, because pretty much everyone openly hates the very thing you’re supposed to defend.
Perhaps in response to this, the BART-er went rogue and started dropping knowledge. It started off innocuously enough:
All our efforts are focused on resolving the electrical issues right now- apologies for all the trouble. We’re working on it.
— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016
…and then the replies started rolling in.
.@SFBART how much does one need to apologize before one realizes they truly offer a terrible service and should no longer apologize?
— CHRISTOPHER CHAPPEL (@shakatron) March 17, 2016
.@SFBART we’ve come to expect rush-hour equipment problems and train delays from you. what you’re saying is that today ends with ‘-day’
— CHRISTOPHER CHAPPEL (@shakatron) March 17, 2016
But instead of ignoring or placating @shakatron, the person or persons running the BART account decided to do things differently:
@shakatron BART was built to transport far fewer people, and much of our system has reached the end of its useful life. This is our reality.
— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016
“This is our reality.” Have you ever heard any government body speak with such resigned honesty before?
The account dismissed any accusations of a meltdown, even though, by normal operating standards, it sort of was:
@kettering No – sugarcoating problems, especially ones obviously disrupting people’s lives, isn’t an effective or honest way to communicate.
— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016
@ladyfox14 It’s one of our greatest challenges – but our engineers are really, really smart. We’ll find a way.
— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016
“We’ll find a way.” Optimism, or existential despair?
@BGRod10 We need to replace 90 miles of rail.
— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016
@juliakite Rails, tunnels, power cabling and substations, fare gates, fault line creep mitigation… it adds up.
— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016
@tundal45 Maybe in eight years.
— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016
@fineplanner It’s extremely difficult to convey complex civic problems in 140 characters…
— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016
@cliberti We have 3 hours a night to do maintenance on a system built to serve 100k per week that now serves 430k per day. #ThisIsOurReality
— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016
“This is our reality” appeared again, but in hashtag form!
@jalrobinson We don’t consider successfully moving the equivalent of the population of Atlanta through BART on a daily basis a failure.
— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016
@jalrobinson At the end of the day, we’re just trying to illustrate the importance of public transit to the Bay Area – and America.
— SFBART (@SFBART) March 17, 2016
On one hand, whoever spent their night responding to random people on the internet with this much honesty deserves a pat on the back. They likely don’t have a real hand in the inner workings of the system, and yet they’re the system’s public representative. That’s not easy, and they did it without completely losing their shit.
On the other hand, as many were quick to point out, the BART infrastructure can be a never-ending nightmare for commuters — at least it’s not the DC Metro!)
Then again, given the amount of praise the account received in response to this honesty, maybe “going rogue” was the plan all along. They also took pretty much every opportunity to emphasise the system’s commitment to fixing shit, which is the oldest public relations strategy in the book. At least they admitted there’s a lot of stuff wrong, though!
As for the mysterious person behind the tweets, it appears that BART’s account is normally run by a few people, one of whom lists “professional apologist for America’s crumbling infrastructure” in his Twitter profile. Yeah, we’re going to assume it was that guy.