Whatever Happened to the Legions of Locals Who Signed Up For Ridesharing With BART Strike Imminent?

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Were they brought together via 511's 'dating service'?

​At the end of the 1987 film Harry and the Hendersons, a couple of longtime Sasquatch enthusiasts ponder what to do with their lives now that they've finally seen -- and befriended -- Bigfoot. "There's always Loch Ness," ponders one.

BART riders are facing something of a similar choice. Now that many of them were forced to consider alternative means to getting from here to there, will they be following through on those alternatives even though the dreaded rail strike never materialized? Will they stick with Bigfoot, or sample Loch Ness?

It's hard to say. Kit Powis, the spokesman for 511 Rideshare, says that online self-registration for the carpooling site jumped by a gaudy 900-plus percent the Friday before last week's scheduled strike date. Phone inquiries jumped by 300 percent. But when asked if any of these folks have ditched BART for carpools Powis is forced to concede he has no idea -- and neither does anyone else.
   
"Once someone gets on our ride list, we don't track them," he explains. 511 Rideshare "provides a list of matches like a dating service." But once the site "sets up" a pair of prospective carpoolers, it doesn't chaperone them but leaves them on their own. If there's been a significant jump of 511-inspired carpoolers or every last soul worried about a BART strike ran back to their railway steady -- no one knows either way.

The soonest anyone will be able to venture a guess about whether the BART-induced Rideshare folks are, indeed, sharing rides will be in the fall when the service sends out its twice-yearly surveys. Powis says he'll be certain to keep us posted.

Our suspicion, naturally, is that the vast majority of those people are riding BART; you don't eat the beef jerky and canned sardines in your earthquake kit if there's no earthquake. We'll see: The opportunity to spin Powis' "dating service" analogy into the sexually charged realm of trains and tunnels beckons.