AC Transit to Expand Its Late Night Bus Service
Press Releases
10/08/2014
Weekend “Owl Service” with New Routes/Increased Frequency
AC Transit is set to increase its late night, All Nighter “owl service”– including expanding and altering routes– with a one-year pilot program that greatly enhances the frequency and destinations of predawn buses on weekends between San Francisco and the East Bay.
The beefed up “after hours” operations will extend bus service from Mission and 24th streets in San Francisco to Pittsburg-Bay Point BART in the East Bay. It will make new stops at BART stations along the way and increase the frequency of service from 30 minutes to 20 minutes from downtown Oakland to BayFair BART.
The pilot program will begin in December in collaboration with BART, which got State Transportation Assistance funds to pay for it. The extended service will occur on
Friday and Saturday nights from 12:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m.— the times when transbay riders need it the most.
“This is the first implementation of several joint projects AC Transit is planning with BART,” said Greg Harper, President of AC Transit’s Board of Directors, which voted unanimously for the idea. “We are happy to do all that we can to support inter-agency transit projects that move us toward seamless transit service for the Bay Area.”
This pilot program augments AC Transits regular All Nighter “owl service” that was begun in 2005 to provide critical transbay service for hundreds of night-shift workers and others– from 12:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m.– when BART trains have stopped for the night.
Line 800 offers daily midnight to 5:00 a.m. service every hour from the Richmond BART station to the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco, making all local stops in Berkeley and Oakland.
Likewise, Line 801 offers a similar hourly service along International Boulevard from downtown Oakland to the Fremont BART station.
Line 800 and Line 801 are the result of Regional Measure 2 funding, $1.8 million of which is earmarked annually for late-night bus service along corridors served by BART. Both Line 800 and Line 801 were designed specifically to fit that funding criteria.