I Tried a World Record Bay Area Transit Speedrun

I attempted to break the world record time for BART Speedruns. That's visiting every single one of the 50 BART stations as fast as possible. But, I did it for a reason you might not expect.

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[PatKellyTeaches]

As a Bay Area resident, this felt like a personalized version of Jet Lag: the Game. Great work Adam, loved it!

[HorusTheLocal]

Hi! I'm one of the Berkeley Students who broke the record earlier this year. Thank you for mentioning us and giving a brief history of BART Speedrunning! Tomo and our group actually managed to find the same route separately, and we did know about Tomo's faster route but felt it was too risky with Guinness World Record's strict requirements requiring witnesses—as you saw the Oakland Airport Connector is really tight! I really enjoyed your video though, and thank you for showing everyone the wonders of BART :)

[forever_stay]

I can't believe that a community of BART speedrunners exists lol thank you youtube algorithm for showing me this

[Electro_Patronum]

Doing this on a Saturday when the trains aren’t running as often is wild

[CqtzYT]

Hey! I'm Enzo/Catz, the world record holder along with tomo tawa linja (Sabi) and this was really cool to watch! Here are some comments I have.

0:28 The current WR is 5:30:26, not 5:30:16
3:50 Being a few minutes late into Dublin, or any terminus for that matter is normal. The turnaround times may just be cut short to prevent the next cycle from departing late.
4:07 Now isn't exactly the best time to speedrun. The stretch between Dublin and West Dublin has been undergoing some maintenance recently, causing single-tracking and delays.
7:45 I actually found the route while looking for possible OAK skips, but I reached out to Sabi (their pronouns are not he/him) as I thought it would be cool that they could reclaim their WR from the TRANSOC group! Unfortunately, they have moved away from the Bay Area and have spoken to me about 'retiring' from future WR attempts.
8:30 The reason actually isn't only because of the distance - Berryessa has a horrid 10-minute turnaround time, while Antioch has E-BART, making them nearly mandatory to start/end at. If you want, I'd love to discuss my strategies for finding new routes and the things I've learned along the journey with you!
13:05 Fun Fact! During our WR run, I actually had to use the bathroom. If you watch our live streams back, during our 8-minute turnaround time at Richmond I was able to sprint to the bathroom and back up before leaving the station.
14:14 Yes! The schedules have finally changed! I have already made multiple 5:10:xx routes, with Caltrain Electrification and without it.
14:35 The trains look much nicer but IMO the E-BART stretch falls far behind the rest of the BART system. They could have done much more with it.

Great video! Once again, I'd love to contact you to discuss the speedrunning history of BART! Let me know if you want to.

edit: a few things to clear up some of the comments on this video

- "not leaving the BART system" is not a rule for speedrunning any transit system. There are actually 2 unofficial categories of speedrunning transit: "any%" and "full completion (fc)". Any% refers to using any methods to reach points of interest in the particular system that you are speedrunning, however, you must either enter or exit a station on the system by a vehicle that the system operates. This also permits bus bridges or other non-mainline-BART infrastructure such as E-BART or OAK Connector.
- Taking Caltrain (from Mountain View via VTAlr or from Diridon via Rapid 500) is completely impossible. Trust me, I and many of my transit friends have already looked deep into any possibilities of going up or down the peninsula on a Baby Bullet and they all fall short by quite a lot.
- Yes, Caltrain can and more than likely will be used if I or anyone else ever improves this run from 5:30 to 5:10. This is due to the fact that you actually HAVE to start at Berryessa and end at Antioch (to get a blue -> blue OAK skip), and because BART trains operate every 20 minutes. To save any meaningful time off 5:30 going from these start/end points, you must improve the time in increments of 20 minutes. This is also why Adam's run was 5:50:xx, 20 minutes slower than the 5:30:xx.
- Like I noted earlier, using the bathroom is more feasible than you might think. You can do this at any station with a decently long turnaround time/transfer.
- It's not just BART! Many transit systems around the world have speedruns for them, including the DC Metro, international destinations like Sao Paulo, and much more.

edit 2: noticed some more things

- Major changes to the map (such as new stations opening, new lines opening, extensions, etc.) will result in a closure of speedrun history as the records are reset. This means that after the Diridon extension, for example, is implemented, the current 5:30:26 WR will have been archived into the past and any new records (slower or faster than 5:30:26) will not compete with the current one.
- Wheels 70x from PHILL/WCREEK to Dublin isn't fast enough. There is simply no reason for anyone to need to take this bus, as you would still need to cover both the entire blue line and the entire yellow line. On top of this, an OAK skip is necessary to even compete for the record, which the 70x's schedule disallows. The combination of the 5 trips a day service along with the nature of a BART speedrun makes this unviable.
- The OAK Connector does indeed not have a timetable schedule. However, if you go to the official bart.gov website and search for either the Coliseum or OAK stations, it will tell you a list of departure times for the people-mover train as well as the blue, orange, and green departures. Headways are 8 minutes (not the 9 listed on the website), with a 1-minute turnaround time, and then another 8 minutes going back. This makes for a trip time of 17 minutes, fitting right in between the 20-minute headways of duplicate blue-lines.

[Unmannedperson]

I feel like "not leaving the BART system" isn't a rule. In any speedrun of world-class transit, there may be a sneaky beaky out-of-system transfer, such as taking a bus between two line termini stations. As long as you pass through every station on a BART train (not walking/bussing past), that to me is sufficient.

I see a future where speedruns involve taking Caltrain between Millbrae and Santa Clara.

[TheHappyTau]

I chuckled when the doors opened on the side you weren't expecting them to. Relatable xD

[theangrynarwhal]

as someone who commuted to Millbrae from Oakland for years - the wait for the red line gave me PTSD

[worldadmin]

i love that bart runs on saturday! i take it all the time and took it that very sunday

[WildWuff]

I'm coming here from an interesting perspective because not only have I been one of the main viewers during the world record livestream of this system, but I also set a transit speedrun record myself of the Portland MAX system! tomo tawa linja is definitely the best source of what to do to best optimize these routes as is who I used for my record, so I'm glad that you mentioned them in this video. And besides all of that this is a great video to watch and enjoy your vibe 💜

[LucasClaus]

Congrats on the 10k! Here’s to the 100k! 🍻

[ArtamStudio]

Back in the Pleistocene when I was between temp jobs but had to leave the house, I'd ride BART from Daly City to Concord or Fremont (the end stations at the time) but for some reason not Richmond. It was a fun diversion - no record-attempts - and a couple of the train operators were quite pleasant to watch.

[kateanon]

I moved down to the LA area a couple years ago and this made me deeply homesick. And also now I'm wondering if there's a similar speedrun for the LA Metro

[downtheline]

Cool video! It's nice that there are timed transfers on BART that you can at least somewhat rely on when planning a run. I tried speedrunning the DC Metro, but the transfer times just varied too much from their scheduled times. Looks like that was some good ice cream at the end!

[shinthemin]

Great video! My favorite part was you doing my exact line at the start. Baryessa to Dublin. Ive done that connection many times now. you got lucky, i have to wait upwards of 10 minutes for my bayfair connections

[arxligion]

On weekdays, there's a sol trans bus that goes from walnut creek Bart to Davis. You can take Amtrak back and it's an interesting day trip

[bunzy]

BART content is always great to see! Awesome video!

[dfunited]

I used to fall asleep on late trains from Oakland towards Concord. Waking up stuck in Pittburg... sucked.
The first few times I fell asleep on the Seoul subway, I freaked out. Fortunately the distances between stations is much shorter, taxis were common near most transit stations, and places to crash for the night (sauna/spa/jjimjilbang) are always nearby.
Different systems have their quirks

[ivannevarez]

I like Bart on 4th of July especially going through Oakland. At night it’s cool seeing the neighborhood fireworks. Probably not legal but still nice.

[ohangelofmine]

This was a fun one!! Got to see a lot of stations i've never been to before!! Bart can be wonderfully beautiful and theres never a dull moment with what you get to see while riding either!! Hope you enjoyed ur speed run attempt!!