No BART for me today!

(Photo via a Thirstin Moore)

That’s West Oakland in the small hours of the morning (no, smartass, not usually, just today). Flames to 150 feet, melted stuff, raining ash, etc. The fire started right alongside the tracks, at a construction project whose gradual progress skyward has provided me some mild amusement for the past few months. It’s interesting to watch buildings come up … bu-uuut it sounds like someone preferred to watch it come down.

Anyway, the arson report will come later. In the interim: commuterpocalypse. Bus “lines” in Oakland this morning looked like this:

(Photo via Terry McSweeney with ABC7)

Meanwhile, freeways snarled, the Bay Bridge “a parking lot” and the ferry website down. But it’s cool, reports the Chronicle, quoting ferry staff, it’s breezy:

We’re happy to help out … . We are public transit, and today the public needed us. In the Bay Area, we get used to things like this. No one seems to mind. Plus, it’s a lovely day.

Dawwwwww!

Summer loving and civic duty aside, today’s shutdown highlights the tube as a critical component of what amounts to a regular mass migration. With 600,000 people crossing the bay daily, there’s already little room for error, less for deliberate disruption. Between the commute, the U.S. Open, and the Giants game, I’m curious to see the dollar value of the closure—and that arson report.