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Update: Marcus is now a full-fledged Station Agent! 

Marcus Dyer had been working at San Leandro Station as a Station Agent trainee for only a week when he noticed something happening. The same six people, every time they stepped inside the station, would wave and stop to chat with him.

“I wanted to become a Station Agent because it gives you the ability to be a part of a community,” Dyer said recently, speaking on a break from on-the-job training at Lake Merritt Station. “You see the same people every day, and sometimes you see them on their worst days. As a Station Agent, you have the opportunity to turn their day around and make it better.”

Dyer is one of 31 individuals training to become station agents at BART. Due to hiring needs, BART is currently running two certification classes concurrently of about 15 trainees each. During the 18-week course, which is held three to four times a year depending on hiring needs, the budding station agents learn about every aspect of the transit agency, including:

• District Operations Rules & Procedures
• Customer Service
• Administrative & Operational Procedures
• Station Facilities and Communications
• Automatic Fare Collection
• Ticket & Clipper Card Analysis
• Reports and Forms
• ADA
• Safety & Emergencies
• Opening and Closing Procedures

The course, which includes on-the-job training as well as classroom-based curriculum, culminates in a rigorous certification test. The current group of trainees is slated to take the test in May.

Dyer, a former student at San Francisco State University, has welcomed his return to the classroom.

“I’m the oldest kid in my class,” he said. “To be able to go back into a school environment and turn my learning skills back on…it makes me feel awesome.”

With age, Dyer said, comes wisdom.

“I’ve had a lot of life experiences and been in a lot of different situations, which helps put things into perspective,” he said. “I tell the younger folks in my class: You’ve been in harder situations than Station Agent training. Relax and try to enjoy it!”

Before embarking on his BART journey, Dyer was a “serial entrepreneur.” In his time, he’s owned a limousine company, an upholstery shop, and a catering business. During the first year of the pandemic, he made and sold more than 2,000 masks when he noticed they weren’t widely available in his community. He donated a mask for each one purchased.

Recently, Dyer felt it was time to make a change and find “more stable” work, especially work that provided benefits such as healthcare and retirement. His road to Station Agent was 20 years in the making, he said.

In the early 2000s, Dyer filed an application to become a BART Station Agent. He made it through the first two stages, but never took the final test.

“I don’t really remember why I didn’t take it. It probably had something to do with my job at the time,” he said. “But it’s always been in the back of my mind that I should have been working at BART 20 years ago.”

Dyer said he was drawn to the role of Station Agent because of his “love for people.”

“To be able to help people while making a living that allows me to take care of myself and my family…it’s a beautiful thing,” he said. At home, he has an eight-month-old Dogo Argentino named Taylor – “She already weighs 75 pounds!” he said with a laugh.

According to Dyer, the Station Agent role “is the hardest job at BART.” That’s why he’s trying to “learn everything” he can about the system – a system he’s been using since he was a child growing up in Oakland.

BART has played a large role in Dyer’s life, and many of his formative memories circle around a station. His church sits right across from MacArthur Station, for example, and he grew up looking at the station and its trappings from the pews. In college, he took BART every day to San Francisco for class. His heart, however, will always reside at Coliseum Station.

“I’m a big A’s, Warriors, and Raiders fan, so I’ve been using that station since I was six years old,” Dyer said. “I’ve probably done hundreds of tailgates in the parking lot.”

Ahead of the final test in May, Dyer is optimistic about what his future at BART might hold. He said the transit agency is “one of the greatest places in the world” for folks looking to embark on a second career.

“If you put your effort into it, you will have the opportunity to succeed,” he said. “I truly don’t know any other place like this, where you can interact with people all day and also make a great living.”

A new report released today paints a bleak picture of a Bay Area without BART while highlighting the benefits of the transit system to the region with a wide range of metrics.

Click here to view a pdf of the report and visit the project webpage at bart.gov/roleintheregion.  

BART's Role in the Region Report aims to inform a regional conversation about the future of BART by describing its contributions to the Bay Area. It also provides predictions for how the Bay Area – its economic viability, traffic-choked roadways, cultural institutions, and more – will look without BART.  

“The Bay Area and our regional transportation network have undergone significant changes since BART last conducted a Role in the Region study in 2016," said BART General Manager Bob Powers. “The 2024 Role in the Region Report arrives at a crucial crossroads for BART and the region, and the data, analyses, and stories within will serve as an important educational resource for the pivotal years ahead.”  

In the report, you will find insights into key topics, including changes in travel patterns and funding; BART’s holistic benefits to the Bay Area; and BART’s future.  

Below is a snapshot of some of the report’s findings: 

• BART’s benefits: 

  • BART is significantly more affordable than driving (Fig. 1 in slideshow). Example: Taking BART from West Dublin/Pleasanton Station to Embarcadero Station roundtrip costs $14. Driving the same route costs $95 when accounting for gas, tolls, parking, insurance, and maintenance. 
  • BART is integral to a connected regional transit network. Within a 15-minute walk of BART and one transfer to a connecting agency transit stop, you can reach 67% of the 9-county Bay Area region’s jobs, 61% of the region’s residents, and 60% of schools, parks, and libraries.
  • In 2023, BART contributed $1.2 billion to the economy through more than 5,000 jobs when accounting for BART’s direct payroll expenditures, local vendor spending, and employee expenditures. Between 2019 and 2023, BART infused the local economy with more than $3.7 billion in construction spending and $1.7 billion in construction labor income.

• If BART did not exist: 

  • Regional traffic congestion would worsen. Example: Drivers could experience up to an additional 19 hours lost to congestion weekly (Fig. 2). 
  • Traffic could increase by 73% on the Bay Bridge and 22% in the Caldecott Tunnel during morning peak commute hours.  
  • The regional transit network would fail to function, and there would be cascading effects across the 300 bus, light rail, ferry, private shuttle, and inter-regional routes that connect to BART (Fig. 3). 

• Changing regional travel trends: 

  • BART ridership is closely linked to regional office occupancy rates; both have recovered to ~43% of pre-pandemic levels (Fig. 4).
  • Because of BART’s decreased farebox recovery, BART expects a budget deficit beginning in 2026 when state and federal emergency assistance runs out.  

View the full Role in the Region Report.