Dude, move the bags!

From the “dude, what are you thinking?” file comes this piece. I normally ride the train three days a week to help offset the every increasing price of gas. It takes a bit longer, but it’s worth the extra 10-15 minutes I spend driving home from the station. Today at Concord a patron boarded up the lead unit with two pieces of luggage. Now, for the regular ridership, this is usually a problem since the luggage will usually end up occupying a seat.

Today was something I had not seen previous, but not unexpected. He set his luggage in the ADA seats (the handicap seat, directly in front of me), which are for elderly and disabled patrons. I figured he was going to move the luggage around after he got situated. No, he walks across the aisle and sits across from me. I was somewhat surprised by his actions. Not only is this inconsiderate, but rude.

He got lucky this morning, as the lead car was not full and not all the seats were occupied. It would have been interesting to see if he would have actually moved his luggage if the car became standing room only, as I have seen it happen in the past. I am quite sure the operator could see luggage occupying the ADA seat. Maybe because of the load he did not say anything over the PA. It would have been more of an issue if he did not move his luggage if those were the last two seats in the car.

It was evident he was not a “regular” on BART. I do believe he did this intentionally and probably would not have moved his bags if a patron wanted to sit there. I guess many patrons really don’t care, that is the bottom line. They figure, they paid their money and can do whatever they want and store their bags wherever they want. Unfortunately that cannot be further from the truth.