It's not the kind of thing you'd expect to find on your commute to work. One rider on a San Francisco International Airport-bound train notified BART customer service Thursday after he got to work and found bug bites on his body.
BART officials say it quickly located the car and took the entire train out of service for cleaning. Officials say bedbugs getting on to trains is rare, but not impossible. The pests may have hitched a ride from one of 430,000 passengers BART carried on Thursday.
Rider Moe Murtadha is grossed out, but not surprised.
"Some of the seats are nasty," Murtadha said. "Most of the time I do standup."
Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 President Chris Finn commends BART for taking the train out of service so quickly, but says trains need to be maintained better.
"If there's a problem with cleanliness; the passenger surveys indicated cleanliness was the biggest problem they were seeing and it was the most important problem for them and BART did a little something towards that but we'd like to them do a lot more to address that
The upholstered wool seats in older cars must be dry cleaned. New BART trains are on the way and the seats will be easier to clean.
"I think, you know the old saying, cleanliness is next to godliness," BART rider Blue Thomas said.
