By Michael Cabanatuan
To the surprise of few, including commuters who faced another major delay Wednesday morning, BART’s customer satisfaction ratings have dropped to the lowest level in the 20 years riders have been asked to rate the transit system.
A biennial survey of BART riders released Wednesday shows that 31 percent of those polled said they were not completely satisfied with the transit system’s service or declined to give it satisfactory marks. Although 69 percent of riders said they were satisfied with the service, it represents a dip of five percentage points since the last survey in 2014.
Dissatisfied riders said they were most upset with the breakdowns and delays that have beset the aging system as well as the surge in ridership that has left more passengers standing, packed onto crowded trains and stations and lining up at times to exit stations.
Grace Crunican, BART’s general manager, said the results were not surprising, even expected, since decisions to invest in new railcars and system renovations have only been made in the past couple of years.
“We knew we were headed in this direction two years ago, and we knew we were headed down before we head up because of the lag in investment,” she said.
As BART’s new trains start hitting the rails in the coming years and the system begins spending the $3.5 billion in improvements funded by November’s bond measure, customer satisfaction should begin to climb, she said.
“By doing this in a systematic way,” Crunican said, “we will get our customer ratings up. But it will take a couple of years.”
For now, though, BART’s popularity is heading down. Most of the decline in overall popularity came from riders who said they were “very satisfied” — down four points compared with 2014. The survey also asked riders if they would recommend BART to a friend or out-of-town visitor. While 85 percent said they would, that was a four-point drop compared with 2014. Asked whether BART is a good value for the money, 59 percent agreed — two points less than 2014.
BART’s survey was taken aboard trains, chosen randomly, at different times of the day between Sept. 9 and Oct.
9. A total of 5,342 riders filled out a two-page questionnaire that asked them where they started and would end their rides, how they got to BART, their overall opinion about service and their perceptions about everything from the BART website to on-time performance of trains.
The margin of error was close to plus or minus 1.3 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence rate, said Aaron Weinstein, BART’s chief marketing officer.
Not surprisingly, the survey found that customers who stood for at least part of their trips gave lower ratings than those who had seats. About 74 percent of those seated said they were satisfied with BART overall while just 61 percent of those standing expressed satisfaction.
“It’s that difference that has driven the (downward) change over the past two years,” Weinstein said.
Surveyed riders listed dozens of complaints, but the study identified seat availability, station conditions and cleanliness, train cleanliness, police presence and space for luggage, bikes and strollers as key issues, Weinstein said.
While the survey results, and the fact that it could take years to fix problems, paint a dire picture, Weinstein told directors that BART had been here before — in 1998 when problems with fare gates, ticket machines and elevators and escalators topped a list of 18 serious problems identified by surveyed riders.
But after eight years without a fare increase, BART raised its prices three years in a row — a 45 percent increase overall — and invested $1.2 billion to fix some of its problems. By 2004, most of that work was done and BART’s satisfaction rating hit 86 percent — an all-time high.
“We’ve been in a trough before,” Weinstein said, “and investment in the system improved things.”
Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan