Podcast: Speedrunners push their limits to set records on the BART system

BART is the only transit agency to officially recognize and encourage speedruns through the BART speedrun webpage at BART.gov/speedrun.

(Podcast transcript below)

HOST ALICIA TROST: There's a new sport gaining popularity across the globe, transit speedrunning, and today we'll take a deep dive into what it takes to speedrun BART. Welcome to “Hidden Tracks: Stories from BART.” I'm your host, Alicia Trost, Chief Communications Officer and today's guests are, in my opinion, local celebrities because all three of them have set records speedrunning BART.

Now, a speedrun is the total time it takes to travel through all BART stations. It's a race against the clock to ride every BART line as fast as possible and my guests are experts. So, welcome Ameen DaCosta, Enzo Wu, and Adam, who runs the YouTube page, “Adam Does Not Exist.” Now for the record, did any of you know each other before BART speedrunning?

GROUP: No (laughter). 

TROST: Total strangers. Right? Never met each other? 

GROUP: Never. 

TROST: And now friends? 

GROUP: Yup.

TROST: So, Ameen, we're going to start with you. I want you to tell everyone about the origins of transit speedrunning. 

AMEEN DACOSTA: Sure. Yeah. Hi. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Transit speedrunning really has a rich history. I would say that it originally started, the most famous one was the tube challenge back in, London, where people were trying to speedrun the entire tube system, which is, London’s metro system. That was kind of the first record that gained popularity online. That's one of the first one, the Guinness World Records certified as being a official, record and that's kind of the first one that started this more worldwide trend of people saying, well, if they can do it in London, why don't we try speedrunning our own local systems? 

So, very popular. One happened in New York City. The current record is just over 22 hours, which is a really, really long time, but it's spread all over. But one thing is that the Bay Area and BART did not have as much of a, speedrunning community. There had been a few individuals who had done speedrunning in the past, but there hadn't been this sort of community that you see in so many other cities and it was just, you know, something that people wanted to explore myself included. 

TROST: And so you teamed up with a group of friends from UC Berkeley, and you wanted to speedrun all of BART, and you even went through the formal application process with Guinness World Records to make it official. So, tell me how this all came about and how you set the first record of five hours, 47 minutes, and 14 seconds.

DACOSTA: So, it's, unfortunately, well, it's not 14 seconds. It was 42 seconds. So, a few seconds more, (laughter) but, yeah, we'll get it's. Yeah, it's a really interesting story, actually. So, you know, I'm studying transportation engineering, transportation planning. I'm a huge transit nerd and one of my classmates last year whose name is Paul, he had speedrun Vancouver's transit system. He’s from Vancouver, Canada, and he had speedrun there, I believe it's called Metrolink System. So, when we first met each other last, I guess over a year ago at this point and started to get to know each other, he floated the idea of doing the similar thing for BART, in the Bay Area, because he had read of a few people who had done in the past, but, you know, kind of want to jump on the trend and, something, you know, do something similar. And I believe it was his idea as well to actually, make this an official Guinness World Record, which ended up being a lot more complicated of a process than we initially thought, and then it probably should have. 

So, back in October of last year, he told me and a few other friends like, hey, I'm applying for this record for, for BART and if it gets approved, I'd love to do it with you guys. And I was like, of course, this sounds absolutely amazing. I mean, who doesn't want to have a Guinness World Record on their fridge? Right? So, he sent the application in October. At that point, it was really just a waiting game for them to kind of approve everything, set out the rules and requirements, kind of set the standards and everything and we just found out in, February of this year that, we were good to go. 

TROST: And so what are some of the requirements? 

DACOSTA: Yeah, a lot more complicated than they should be, I would say. So, of course, there's the more general standard requirements that you would think of, such as, you know, you have to hit every single station by transit. You're not allowed to take a car or any sort of private vehicle, you know, things like that. But they also have more specific rules, such as, they want to have as much filming as possible in the entire system, including all the transfers and the beginning and the end. We had to have two outside witnesses meet us at the beginning to start the official timer, and then meet us at the end to have the official time that we could then use to, verify our record. So, shout out to our two classmates who drove us to Antioch in the morning and picked us up from, San Jose in the evening. We couldn't have been possible without you. There was also a few other things. We had to have a logbook and try to get, people’s signatures throughout to certify that we weren't cheating, that we were actually doing this. So, we had to meet up with some people as well as we had friends meet us at different portions along the journey. So, we had to make sure to time appropriately and be like, ‘we're in the first car, meet us here or meet us at this station at this time,’ and if anything went wrong, we'd have to communicate with them, to make sure that we were all on the same page.

We had people delivering snacks and, you know, other goodies to keep us going for the almost six hours and then there are a few other things as well. You know, as I said, as much filming as possible and just as much verification as possible. They just want to make sure that we are not, you know, not fudging anything, not cheating at all. So, official logbook with all the times at every station, photos at every station with the station name just as much as possible to submit.

TROST:  For those who are finally catching on what we're talking about, BART speedrunning, you don't actually have to get off a train and then go tag out. I think that's a misconception. Explain exactly what happens as you pull into each station.

DACOSTA: Yes, of course. So, I know I've heard a lot of people saying that, saying, how is it possible to get out at every station and do all of this stuff and still get in this time? And no, that's not what we did at all. Otherwise, it would have definitely taken over a day. So, what we had to do is we approached each station, we would line ourselves up. I was on camera duty, so I took a photo at every station. One of my friends, Jacob, on his phone, had the official time, just the clock app on his phone in the view of my camera and then we would have the station name. So, from one of the station signs and the camera at the same time in the same photo, so that Guinness knows, okay, they were at this station at this time. And it was a little hard at some of the stations, you know, depending on where the, columns were or the station signs, to kind of make sure we got a good angle and to make sure everything was in focus as well. Sometimes, you know, the camera has a fun habit of either getting the clock in focus or the station sign in focus and not both. So, that was very difficult. We had to, you know, at a few stations, even kind of run out onto the platform and grab a photo really quick. But luckily we didn't miss any of the trains while doing this. 

We, didn't really have any major issues kind of getting the photos, and getting kind of that sort of proof that they need. And then at the end, we would just write down the time and keep it down in our logbook. 

TROST: And remind me it was a Saturday?

DACOSTA: We did it on a Saturday. Yeah.

TROST: So, it's Saturday. I'm at home, probably in my pajamas on the couch. I jump on Twitter, BART Twitter, and I see a post at Balboa Park and it's adorable and it's your team doing a little dance, waiting to transfer and very thrilled that the train was arriving for that transfer on time. When did you realize BART was following your journey and starting to engage with you? 

DACOSTA: That was amazing and that was what really made it one of the best days in my entire life. So, one of our members, quick shout out to Jacob, Paul, Winnie, and Chance. Those were my four teammates. and thank you, Melody and Mike, for driving us in the morning and picking us up in the evening.

So, Winnie's main job was social media duty. We were all members, with the exception of Chance, from UC Berkeley. Graduate students were member of TRANSOC, which is the graduate student transportation club on campus. So, one thing that she was in charge of was kind of getting the social media post, kind of getting some outreach, just kind of making, you know, a social media presence of what we were doing.

But we never expected BART to actually, pick up on what we were doing, and, you know, all of this to happen. So, I believe we were out on, heading south towards Coliseum and we saw on Twitter that they had taken, I believe it was you, who had taken a few screenshots from our live stream that we were and put them on Twitter, which was super, super exciting because that was our first kind of, recognition that BART knew what we were doing, was excited and supported it because a lot of, transit systems don't always love speedrunners and don't love transit nerds, which I find very surprising because if anything, we're kind of promoting the good of public transit. And then a few minutes later, when we're out on the Oakland Airport Connector, I saw that the BART Twitter account actually followed me on Twitter and that was I think there's a really funny clip on the YouTube stream of me being like, ‘oh my God, oh my God, BART, I love you!’ And it was just really, really exciting to see all of the engagement at that point. And BART, you know, made a tweet it said with the waving emoji and then, my username @Horus_The_Local, I just saw that it was so, so, so exciting because we were getting recognized. We had all the support from BART. It was just so exciting to see, you know, see everyone, see all of you guys supporting us and kind of cheering us on our journey.

At that point, the live stream completely picked up in so many more people joined, and we're excited and I was engaging with everyone inthe live stream chat. And of course there were some people being like, ‘why are you doing this? ‘But everyone was so excited and just it was a great atmosphere for the second half of our journey.

TROST: And it was your speedrun that inspired BART to start an official website, BART.gov/speedrun, where we acknowledge anyone who has done a speedrun as long as there's documentation. And you don't need to break a record to be acknowledged on the page and I do believe we are the only transit agency, probably in the world to have an official website recognizing speedruns.

So now I want to bring in Enzo because it was only a few months after Ameen’s speedrun that you did your first speedrun, and you beat them by 17 minutes. So, five hours and 30 minutes. So, Enzo, what made you want to do a speedrun? 

ENZO WU: All right, well first of all thank you for having me. Tt's truly an honor to be part of the podcast. Well, I first got into transit, I, I became a transit enthusiast because of 5-1-1’s free bus passes, during the first few months of school. And I used these bus passes to go to and from school, for free. And it was a really nice experience because it was the first taste of like, true independence, like, you know, being able to go out and do stuff on your own without having to ask a parent or guardian to drive me everywhere.

After that experience, I just kind of got interested in, like, what can I actually do with transit? And then that led me down a really long rabbit hole and eventually I found this, speedrun, which I believe was posted just a little while after, Ameen’s and the TRANSOC group speedrun. and I saw their video on YouTube, and it got me really intrigued because, you know, I'm part of the gaming community, the greater gaming community and I'm also part of the transit community. When I saw the chance to combine them together in the form of a speedrun, naturally, I clicked on the video and then I just got completely attached. I had always wanted to beat the world record but to do that, you have to find the route first and I figured that was probably best if I asked Tonsi or I reached out and contacted them, and we ended up popping on a call for actually a few hours discussing transit. 

TROST: And so, tell me, how do you plan these trips? Like, do you use the trip planner, the PDF timetables? Do you make your own spreadsheet? How do you do this? 

WU: Yeah, so, among the speedrunning community, I think it's pretty known that the timetables, the PDF timetables on BART's official website are probably the best bet because it allows you to see the entirety of BART, rather than a specific segment, like using the Trip Planner.  It’s basically just a form of brute forcing all of these timetables and looking at the map and just thinking outside the box, you know, it's the creativity that brings you to make such, unique runs, to say the least, such as running from, Powell Station to Fourth and King Caltrain.

TROST: And Ameen, did you also use the PDF timetables? 

DACOSTA: Yeah, we did the same thing. We also had a Excel sheet then where we kind of wrote out all of our and I assume is very similar situation with Enzo where, Paul and I just spent hours on the phone as well, or individually procrastinating on my homework, Just kind of thinking of every possible route. And like Enzo said, it's really kind of looking at the ends of the lines and saying, okay, you know, you're not gonna want to double back on Antioch because it's so much further away from connecting to any other line. You know, you're not gonna want to probably double back at Berryessa because it's so much further away and kind of saying, okay, if that's your start and end, how do you kind of fit everything else in between covering every station in the least amount of time possible?

TROST: And is it true that you had found the five-hour, 30 minute run, but you chose not to do it? 

DACOSTA: It's true, it's true. I know, looking back, maybe we would have done things differently, but actually, I do think we made the right decision just because of all those really strict Guinness World Record requirements we had before. I'm sure Enzo will get into this later, but, you know, they did not succeed on their on their first try. And we knew that with us, with all these different moving parts, with people driving us to the beginning, in the end, with the official time and all the witnesses in the middle, it had to be a one and done situation.

So, barring any sort of major BART disruption, which luckily did not happen, we knew that we had to make a route that guaranteed and as you'll see later, the five hours 30 had a lot riskier, connection that we did not want to risk for our run. 

TROST: Okay. Perfect spot to bring in Adam. So, you got into speedrunning because you were making YouTube videos about transit, and I think you just thought like, ‘oh, I wonder if I just wrote every BART line, you know, like, it's a original concept, right?’

ADAM: I don't sound like that. (laughter)

TROST: So, tell us, tell us a little bit about that. 

ADAM: Yeah, It's like, again, thank you for having us here. It's a real honor. I was just trying to make videos about the Bay Area that were positive. You know, nobody does that and it felt like somebody should be covering that side of it and just inspiring people to have all these adventures that you could have.

Not exactly, but like getting to every single station as fast as possible was totally a thing. I thought it would be fun just to ride it all, and, like, that would be good enough. But apparently you got to do it as fast as humanly possible. That’s when I found Ameen and all of the media that had surrounded everything he did around, around his run and the TRANSOC team, I found Tonsi and the run that they did after that, and I just knew I had to try it. 

TROST: So, you posted your first video and Enzo drops in the chat. All this knowledge a little bit schooling you that. Do I have this correct? How did this and how did your friendship then start off of just chatting on your YouTube page? 

ADAM: Enzo shaking his head as if it wasn't schooling me, but I, I think we, I think we both know that it was. So, I made that video I posted on YouTube and he has the top like comment by like hundreds of views because he just dropped all this knowledge about speedrunning. I was like a little caught off guard. I was like, this is like kind of a weird video. Like, you know, it's not a ton of detail in there. Like, who is this guy? Like, is it is it real? He also claimed to be part of a previous world record. I was like, no, no, he's not like he's not in that video at all and then he emailed me. Similar to Enzo and Tonsi, we got on the phone, we talked about speedrunning for two hours and like in the middle of it, he's like, oh, by the way, I'm 15 years old. And I was like, this is this is just this is it's not real. But turns out it was real. And at the end of that call, he baited me with, I think I've got an even faster route and that's how it all began. 

TROST: Yeah. So, Enzo, tell us you had been trying to figure out how to beat. So, remember, at this point, we're at five hours and 30 minutes and that you had developed this new concept that would be five hours and ten minutes. So, what were the big changes and tell us about that? 

WU: All right. So, originally the time save between the 5:50 projected route and the 5:30 projected route was using an OAK skip, which is basically just catching a perfect OAK cycle because OAK runs every 18 minutes or so and fits perfectly between BART's 20-minute headways, which seriously improved the time. It improved it by 20 minutes. And then the second time around, when 5:30 was already done and dusted, it was kind of widely accepted that I knew faster would be practically impossible and even to this day, it's still almost impossible. There have been countless attempts at beating the 5:10 record that Adam set, that have all been failures although I can't really say that I haven't put an effort because I definitely have. It's just so seriously difficult and the major part of the 5:10 is the fact that you have to run or bike, on Lyft’s Bay Wheel Bikes between Powell Station and Caltrain’s Fourth and King Station because going down south on the Peninsula, on Caltrain saves time and it also saves, having to transfer between two lines on BART. And you can still connect back to BART at Millbrae on the Red Line going northbound and you'll still collect every station. 

TROST: So, for people who are not as big a fans of transit as we are, the biggest change was you realize something at Millbrae.  What was the big thing that was the game changer involving a certain other transit system that really pushed you over the edge to saving time?

WU: Yeah, so, the new Caltrain schedules, with their electrification and their electrified trains, allowed their trains to run faster. But it didn't actually impact how fast the trains ran between the period of Caltrain’s Fourth and King Station and their Millbrae Station. So, the time it takes to travel between the two stations is actually the same. However, the new timetables did offer new times to look at and brute force, and when I looked at the new times, it was pretty clear that there was a much larger possibility, between running, between Powell and Fourth and King because the time had now been widened. It was previously, I believe, four minutes in the old timetables, which of course is pretty impossible unless you teleport. And, in the new timetables, I believe it's 7 or 8 minutes. which definitely is a lot more forgiving, although it's still very difficult.

TROST: So, what were you thinking when you realized, wait, if I get off BART and do a bike share and Caltrain and then get back on BART, how did that even come to mind? It's brilliant. 

WU: Well, I mean, once you get to a certain point, it's just looking at the map and really just thinking, I'm going to try every single possible route, no matter how dumb it may seem, such as doubling back at Antioch. Yes, I did look at those, and eventually, I exhausted pretty much every option, that I know of. And then I looked at the map and I just thought to myself, wow, BART is pretty much the fastest transit in the entire Bay Area. but I did say pretty much, because Caltrain is indeed faster than BART, especially now with their electrified trains. And I was thinking, well, how can I incorporate the two fastest rails in the entire Bay Area combined into one run? And maybe it might save some time. And I looked at the map and Caltrain does take a more direct route between the top of the Peninsula and Millbrae. This direct route saves time because not only does Caltrain run faster and makes less stops and of course, a straight line will always be faster than a curve. 

TROST: Okay. Ameen, I'm going to ask you something really controversial and that may impact your friendship with Enzo, but based on the Guinness World Record rules, in your expert opinion, is taking Caltrain during a BART speedrun and using a bike as part of the trip. Does it officially count?

DACOSTA: Wow. I'm honored to be considered an expert. This is amazing. Yeah, so, here's the thing. When the original tube challenge rules were set back in the 90s, I believe, you know, bike sharing was not a thing at all and, they explicitly say no bikes, no private vehicles, all of that, all that good stuff. For every record since even though this record was just, you know, approved this year, they still basically copy and paste those same rules and just kind of, you know, copy paste wherever it says London changed it to San Francisco, which is why the actual official record is fastest time to visit all San Francisco metro stations, which, you know isn't exactly what BART is, but that's just kind of their way of formatting for all of these records.

So, with all those caveats, it's never been a issue that has been taken to the hands of Guinness. I guess, to make a decision on and that's where it's really gray area, because with Bay Wheels, it is a public system. You know, you can use your Clipper card to, pay for it. So, by that regards, it is a form of public transit, but it also says regularly scheduled and a bicycle is not going to be a regularly scheduled public transit system because, you know, it's assuming that there's a bike that's available, you can kind of just use it whenever you want.

So, it's really this gray area that, I have not really stepped my foot in in trying to make a statement one way or the other. I think that would have to be, a decision made by Guinness at some point whenever that issue is brought up to them, which, you know, is not something that we had in our record runs, that's not an issue for us. I don't know how they would, reply to that. I don't know how they would respond, because they would really have to kind of look at their ruleset and figure out, do they consider bike share public transit. If it's by the books as their specific rules right now I would say probably if I had to choose, wouldn't count. But I think that the rules do need updating. If someone brought a record with this to them, there's a good chance that they could potentially, you know, change the rules and kind of allow for these more modern, forms of transportation. 

TROST: Right. So, Adam, you posted the video of this ride. You went together, the two of you and then actually, I mean, did join in towards the end. So, what is the people in the chat of your YouTube page, what are they saying about this? 

ADAM: I mean, that was such a diplomatic answer from the you run the MTA some day? Yeah, I was shocked by how just unanimously positive the comments were, and it is like there's heartbreaking sections in the video and talk about just like how difficult it is to not only find this, but like, but just like do it. It took us took us four tries. So, the comments were shockingly positive. I think my favorite comment it's about Enzo's dad, you know, the true MVP of this. Like showing up with us at like 6:30 in the morning to be the timekeeper and to get Enzo to the start line and meeting us in the middle to grab our stuff and then meeting us at the end, like if we were going to make it to the end. Yeah, a bunch of people commented on how Enzo's dad was just like the true hero of the story. 

TROST: I love that. so, Enzo, would you say the biggest factor in breaking the speedrun record really comes down to the BART to Oakland airport service, or. OAK, as you called it earlier? 

WU: I actually do believe that the Oakland Connector is not the major part of the run, although a lot of runs do die there especially with the new bike controversy, there have been countless people trying to do, bikeless attempts, which is basically just doing the same run but without the use of bikes. And in this case, they would try to either take a bus if available down Fourth Street or just straight running, which like I said, is extremely difficult.

But the OAK definitely is one of the hardest parts of the run and I do know many countless attempts that have died at, the OAK Connector, because the timing is extremely tight and unless you get the timings down exactly, then the transfer can basically just kill your entire run. 

TROST: My favorite part of all the videos, whether it's Adam's video or even the run you did with Sabi, is the epic practicing of the right hand, and you're literally sprinting the moment the door opens, you run to get to that airport connector. So just tell us a little bit about planning that and the time of day and how do you go about making sure you know exactly when to hit that airport connector? 

WU: Yeah. So, there are definitely some, secrets to researching that, like a connector. that shall be kept secret, unfortunately. But if you do spend a long enough time looking at OAK you'll be able you will be able to crack the code. And after that, it's just like, it's just repetition. You know, the more you practice, the more the better you get. And the run is pretty short but there are some tiny things that new runners might not know such as, standing in the last doors of the last quarter of the train, to be closest to the staircase going up. It's just like a bunch of factors coming down together, which is really why it's so difficult, because it's not just one thing. There's multiple variables working against you here and you do have to be quite lucky so, your train doesn't delay and so the OAK comes on time as expected. But there also is a lot of skill to it in terms of research. 

TROST: All right let's talk about logistics, Adam. How do you handle bathroom breaks. 

ADAM: Oh my God I, I think your best bet is just hope you don't have to use the bathroom because there's almost no time, and there's a section. We thought that taking Caltrain and the new Caltrains would be like a hack because they have like more bathrooms and they're newer, they're nicer. But, when I got to Caltrain, when I finally made it onto that train, the bathrooms were out of order. I, like, watched them, put the ‘out of order’ sign up and like, lock the door. And I was like, what about the other cars? The other cars were all out of service as well. Still working out some kinks with the new Caltrains.

But it's tough there. That's like one of the unsung difficulties of doing a speedrun. Like the OAK Connector is impossible. Making it to Caltrain is impossible, like having no delays and just like every single second matters and then there's all this other stuff that, like, has to go perfectly, which is why I like teaming up with someone like Enzo who can figure this out. Yeah, it's super beneficial.

TROST: Ameen, you schedule the bathroom break, right, For your team?

DACOSTA: We did but, actually, what ended up happening again had to do with the OAK Connector. So, with our run, we had 30 minutes, to do the 18-minute OAK cycle but what ended up happening is when we actually got to the station, we had just missed one of the connectors.

So, in terms of the total time for a run, it was fine because we even if we had to wait the additional eight minutes, it was still fine because we would still have enough time afterwards. But what this did mean is originally our plan was to get the OAK Connector done, and we'd have ten minutes to be able to go to the bathroom at Coliseum Station and Paul and I had actually scouted out that station the day before to make sure that the bathrooms were operating and in order, and one the bathroom just out of service. We spoke to a maintenance worker who said it was going to be fixed by the weekend, which was absolutely music to our ears.

We did study the Oakland Airport Connector trains as well, to see if they lined up with the Trip Planner schedule as well, which, spoiler alert, they do not, at all. So, by missing the initial OAK Airport Connector, connection, it meant that by the time we took he train to the airport and back, we only had about 3 or 4 minutes before hitting our next BART train, and I did not want to risk missing our train, so I ended up actually holding it in for the entire six hours. So, similarly to Adam, I was planning on having a break about halfway through, which is perfect. That ended up not happening. We had to go the whole six hours, but I made sure to limit my water intake, you know, do these strategies to kind of make sure there wasn't going to be an emergency on the train, let’s just say.

TROST: And then you have to think about like power packs, right, and cell phone charging for live streaming. What was your plan there? 

DACOSTA: Oh, yeah. So, before we even started, we, kind of made a list of all of us of what we need to bring. So, of course, water, snacks, layers, in case it got chilly. But one of one of the big things, so we were live streaming as well as they were live streaming their attempt and one of the big things is power packs. So luckily, one great thing about BART, compared to many other transit systems is that even in the tunnels, you still have great cell service. I was very worried about losing cell, losing reception, throughout a lot of the trip. But for the most part, other than a few parts close to San Jose, where the self-service wasn't great, the stream rarely went out, which was absolutely amazing. Our viewers were very appreciative of that. And Guinness World Records.  I hope it will be very appreciative of that as well.

So, power packs is a big thing because we were streaming on someone's phone, so we all brought spare batteries. We all brought, you know, chargers as well. So, if we need to charge, we wouldn't have many options to. But if we need to charge for 5 or 10 minutes in the middle we could. Just everyone brought whatever they had, just to make sure we had enough stuff because the last thing we want to do was be on the final home stretch and then have the phone run out of battery. That would have been absolutely devastating. So luckily, that did not happen. We had all our batteries. I think we went through, I want to say three batteries, two or three batteries. It was a lot, but, I'm glad that we prepared well. 

TROST: Yeah, and Adam, your videos are so entertaining, and you do such a great job filming yourself, and so are other people looking at you like, what is this guy doing? And you're on the train for hours, so are you, you know, chatting with people while filming? 

ADAM: Yeah. I mean, sometimes yes, I am chatting with people, I think, and was making a bigger stir the day we did our video. He was definitely more hyped up than I was. But yeah, that's I mean, like that and thumbnails are the hardest part of making YouTube videos is just like being in public and like, having people see what you're doing and just, like, look like a bit of a clown talking to a camera. But yeah, it all goes with it. 

TROST: So, Enzo, what is next? Do you so do you think, five hours, ten minutes is beatable. 

WU: No, I don't really want to be the half empty guy, but I do think that beating five-ten would be extremely difficult and I know that there are some people in the community that have found better routes using rather unorthodox methods, such as praying that a BART train is exactly X minutes delayed and that your BART train is exactly X minutes early, and stuff like that.

So, it's a lot of like theory at this point because of course the record is extremely, optimized. And when it comes down to this, like I said, it's just back to the drawing board, just looking at every possible route, no matter how dumb or how wrong it could be, there is no wrong route when it comes to speedrunning. And eventually, if you do find that route that does beat five-ten, it will be extremely rewarding. Now, do I think it's possible? I'm not going to jinx it, but I do hope that one day five-ten is beaten by a run that is a completely new route and a new idea. 

TROST: So, wrapping things up, you've all found literally notoriety from this. I want to hear a little bit about that experience. Ameen, why don't you start us off? 

DACOSTA: Yeah. So, it really started mid journey with BART kind of posting about our run, which again, was an incredible experience and from there it kind of took off in a lot more than I think any of us were expecting. So, even as we were finishing our run, I was, fielding requests from, reporters in my, in my DMs, which was the first. We were getting our post celebration meal down in San Jose, and I was responding to a couple of reporters in my Twitter DMs, which was, a surreal experience. Yeah, it was it was absolutely amazing.

We had many newspaper interviews online publications, we had four TV interviews, which was probably the coolest experience going to an actual TV studio and being interviewed live by a reporter. It was just the type of experience where I don't know if I'll ever have that option again. I don't know if this something like this is ever going to happen to me again. I'm sure you know I'm still young there'll be a lot of amazing things I have in my life, but something that kind of goes this viral to an extent. I don't know if it's going to happen and I really embraced it. I mean, I was up on Reddit, you know, responding to comments from people being like everything for the positives and similar to Adam's YouTube comments where you have a lot of people being like, ‘this is so cool, you know, I remember taking BART.’ It was great seeing all these kind of feel good stories of other people who, who took BART and kind of shared all their positive experiences. and then there were, of course, all the few people who are like, why are you doing this, why are you choosing to spend all your time on a Saturday doing this? And just seeing of all of the reactions was a really amazing experience. 

But yeah, just it was great to just have all these opportunities to, you know, share our story kind of share why we love transit so much and really just kind of be good publicity for BART and for public transportation as a whole. I mean, we're all public transportation, you know, nerds. Especially all of the people who I did the run with. We're all studying transportation, engineering, transportation planning. We're going to be looking for careers in the future and the more kind of goodwill there is for public transportation in a selfish way hopefully means that there'll be more job opportunities for us in the future as well, but also helping out the community, helping out myself. I mean, I love taking public transportation, you know, growing up in New York City, taking public transportation, similar to Enzo everywhere, gave me that sense of kind of independence and autonomy as well. So, anything just kind of promotes public transportation and, makes it more popular. I'm all for it. I would do my part. 

TROST: Adam, what about you?

ADAM: Yeah, I just feel lucky. I feel really lucky that, like, Enzo reached out to me and included me on this kind of crazy thing that he was able to accomplish. And it's like why I say in the video, like, if you're from Stanford or even Berkeley, you should reach out to this kid because what he's done here is unbelievable. It's well outside of the school system. It's not just like excelling in sports or academics. It's like really impressive what he did and like I'm so happy with like kind of how, the story turned out. I thought it, it was just like, fortunate that I got to be a part of it and then like Ameen said, YouTube and internet comments can be pretty nasty. But to see, like the comments that I get on some of these adventure videos where people say, like, ‘I used to drive from Davis into San Francisco, every single day and it was awful and now I take the BART in from Antioch and it's awesome.’ It's amazing. Or, you know, people say, like,’ I never knew I could get to Yosemite that way. I can't see, like, I can't drive and now I have an option of taking public transit from San Francisco to Yosemite.’ Those comments, I think, are just so special to get. 

TROST: Yeah, thank you for sharing all those adventures also on YouTube. All right Enzo let's bring it home. When has this mean for you?

WU: So, I think speedrunning has really just been the pinnacle of my transit experiences so far. I mean, yes, I'm still very young and I haven't really gotten that much experience in the world of transit. It's only like my second or third year, maybe but I do think that there is a goal in mind when I did this and my goal was really just like to make something out of my passion for transit, because especially at the school I go to, it's often where students are suppressed from what they truly want to do. And it's all peer pressure, parent pressure. You know, counselors telling them, oh, do this, do that, go do this extracurricular, don't do this extracurricular and it really just made me sad to see, like, so many kids passions just die out, because there's no one supporting them. And that's also another big part, I think my, mom and dad, really supported me on this journey, especially by, chauffeuring us from, all over the place in the Bay to get down to Berryessa in time.

But I think that the main thing here is that, it's more than just a world record for me. It's more like making a statement and that transit is actually something that does matter and especially to people my age where, you know, this demographic that I target in terms of influence isn't always exposed to transit, especially here in the Bay where almost everyone I know has cars. Like I said, it's sad to see them just, like, sit at home all day just doing stuff that they really don't want to be doing that they're forced to be doing when they could be going outside on these adventures like I do. Exploring the Bay Area, getting familiar with their surroundings, learning new things that they actually want to learn, and pursuing their passions.

It’s the influence that I spread to people that are my demographic that not many other transit enthusiasts can spread influence to, because the demographic that I reach out to are teenagers my age, or people in high school, or even people younger than me. And I've personally talked to countless people about, becoming transit oriented and incorporating transit into their life. And I've also passively spread influence by obviously achieving the speedrun and a lot of people in my school by now have seen the website, the videos, it's all over. Whether you hate it or whatnot, everyone can have their own opinion, but it's something that no one can take away from me now. 

TROST: Yeah, and no one hates it.

WU: You'd be surprised. 

TROST: So I do want to give a shout out to some of the OGs of transit speedrunning for BART that we know of, it's Jim Yu, Miles Taylor, aka Miles in Transit. Hayden Miller, a good friend to all Bay Area Transit and Sabi, aka Tonsi. Those are the ones that BART knows about. So, if you have speedrun and we haven't mentioned you or you're not listed on our website, hit us up.

I want to thank my guest today, Ameen DaCosta, Enzo Wu, and Adam and thank you for listening to ‘Hidden Tracks stories from BART.’ You can listen to our podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play, and of course on our website at BART.gov/podcasts.