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Bozeman, MT (PRWEB) August 15, 2007

Montana Signature Properties (http://christiesmontana.com), the exclusive Montana affiliate of Christie’s Great Estates, has announced the commencement of designated representation in the Flathead Lake area of northwestern Montana. In conjunction with this opening, Christie’s Montana has also announced that they have been awarded representation by Harvard University of a unique 95-acre Flathead Valley lakefront property that has never before been on the market.

Christie’s Montana has represented property throughout all of Montana since their founding in 2003. However, the volume of business conducted in the Flathead region necessitated the selection of a designated agent for that area. Montana Signature Properties (MSP) already lists approximately million in property in the Flathead area. They now have one agent representing fine homes and land in the Flathead Valley and will recruit no more than two additional professionals.

The 95-acre Montana lakefront property MSP will be representing is located just outside of Marion on Little Bitterroot Lake. The property consists of one 56+ acre lot and one 36+ acre lot with over 2,000 combined feet of frontage. The lots are located in a private gated community containing 11 original lots. These Montana land parcels are quintessential examples of the state’s natural beauty. In addition to their lakefront area, they feature rocky cliffs, timber, and meadows ideal for a private estate or corporate retreat. The offering price for the two lots is .9 million.

In addition to the Flathead Valley, Christie’s Montana offers real estate services in Whitefish, Bigfork, Kalispell and the Swan Valley. They will soon be opening offices in the Missoula/Hamilton area and are continuing to enhance their Montana real estate services in the Big Sky, Bozeman, Livingston and Ennis areas.

Christie’s Montana (http://christiesmontana.com) is the only wholly-owned Montana luxury real estate firm offering MLS access, search capabilities and representation throughout all of western Montana. MSP is the sole Montana affiliate of Christie’s Great Estates, the largest network of real estate brokers dedicated to the marketing and sale of important properties.

Christie’s Montana can be contacted by phone at 1-800-587-7850 or by email at homes(at)christiesmontana.com.

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Biography

Early life and career

The son of a lorry driver, Bolan grew up in post-war Hackney, East London, amongst a Jewish family, and later lived in Wimbledon, southwest London. He fell in love with the rock and roll of Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Arthur Crudup and Chuck Berry[citation needed] at an early age and became a Mod, hanging around coffee bars such as the 2 I’s in Soho. He appeared in an episode of the television show Orlando as a Mod extra.

At the age of nine, Bolan was given his first guitar and began a skiffle band shortly after, and at fifteen, he left school “by mutual consent.”

Plaque marking Marc Bolan’s childhood home, 25 Stoke Newington Common, Hackney. (November 2005)

He briefly joined a modelling agency and became a “John Temple Boy,” appearing in a clothing catalogue for the menswear store. He was used as a model for their suits in their catalogues as well as a model for cardboard cut-outs to be displayed in shop windows. “TOWN” Magazine featured him as an early example of the Mod movement in a photo spread with a couple of other “faces”.

Marc Feld had changed his name to Toby Tyler when he met and moved in with child actor Allan Warren, who was to become his first manager. Warren saw Toby Tyler’s potential whilst Toby spent hours sitting cross-legged on Warren’s floor playing his acoustic guitar. Warren then took him to the photographer Michael McGrath and commissioned a series of photographs. Warren then hired a recording studio and had Bolan’s first acetates cut. One track being the Bob Dylan song ‘ Blowing in the wind’. Also a version of Betty Everett’s “You’re No Good” which was later submitted to EMI for a test screening but they turned down the then Toby Tyler. Warren later sold Marc’s contract and recordings for 200.00 to his landlord, property mogul David Kirch, in lieu of three months back rent. Kirch was far too busy with his property empire to do anything for him. A year or so later, Marc’s mother pushed into Kirch’s office and shouted at him that he had done nothing for her son. She demand he tear up the contract and willingly he complied.

The tapes produced during the Toby Tyler recording session vanished from thought and mind for over twenty-five years before resurfacing in 1991 and selling for nearly eight thousand dollars. Their eventual release on CD in 1993 made available the earliest of Marc’s known recordings.

After changing his name again to Marc Bolan (via Mark Bowland) while with Decca Records he released his first single “The Wizard.” In early 1967 Manager Simon Napier Bell added him to the Pop-Art/mod band John’s Children, which achieved some success as a live band but sold few records. A John’s Children single written by Marc Bolan called “Desdemona” was banned by the BBC for its line “lift up your skirt and fly.” His tenure with the band was brief. Bolan claimed to have spent time with a wizard in Paris who allegedly gave him secret knowledge and could levitate. The time spent with him was often alluded to but remained “mythical”; in reality the wizard was probably U.S. actor Riggs O’Hara with whom Bolan made a trip to Paris in 1965. His songwriting took off and he began writing many of the neo-romantic songs that would appear on his first albums with Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Besides Berry, Bolan’s influences included Bob Dylan, Syd Barrett, Cliff Richard and Elvis Presley.

Tyrannosaurus Rex

When John’s Children collapsed (amongst other problems, the band were stunned to discover their equipment had been stolen from a studio, according to a Bolan biographer), Bolan and Steve Peregrine Took created Tyrannosaurus Rex, a psychedelic-folk rock acoustic group, playing Bolan’s songs, with Took playing assorted hand and kit percussion and occasional bass to Bolan’s acoustic guitars and voice.

This version of Tyrannosaurus Rex released four albums and four singles, flirting with the charts, getting as high as number fifteen and getting airplay and support from Radio 1 DJ John Peel. One of the highlights of this era was playing at the first free Hyde Park concert in 1968. Drug-taking and free spirited Took was fired from the group after their first American tour. A rock and roller at heart, Bolan began bringing amplified guitar lines into the duo’s music, buying a vintage Gibson Les Paul guitar (later featured on the cover of the album T. Rex in 1970). After replacing Took with Mickey Finn, he let the electric influences come forward even further on A Beard of Stars, the final album to be credited to Tyrannosaurus Rex. It closed with a song, Elemental Child, featuring a long electric guitar break influenced by Jimi Hendrix.

Then Bolan, by now married to his girlfriend June Child (a former secretary to the manager of another of his heroes, Syd Barrett), shortened the group’s name to T.Rex and wrote and recorded “Ride a White Swan,” dominated by a rolling, hand clapping back-beat, Bolan’s electric guitar and Finn’s percussion.

T. Rex and glam rock

Bolan and his producer Tony Visconti sorted out the session for “Ride a White Swan” and the single changed Bolan’s career almost overnight. Recorded on 1 July 1970 and released later that year, making slow progress in the UK Top 40, it finally peaked in early 1971 at No. 2. Bolan and Visconti largely (and, in many ways, unwittingly) invented the style that would become glam rock and helped restore a brash and exciting feel, when rock bands had grown increasingly self-important.

Bolan took to wearing top hats and feather boas on stage as well as putting drops of glitter on each of his cheekbones. Stories are conflicting about his inspiration for thisome say it was initially introduced by his PA, the late Chelita Secunda, although Bolan told John Pidgeon in a 1974 interview on Radio 1 that he noticed the glitter on his wife’s dressing table prior to a photo session and just casually daubed some on his face there and then. Other performersnd their fansoon took up variations on the idea.

The glam era also saw the rise of Bolan’s friend David Bowie, whom Bolan had come to know in the underground days (Bolan had played guitar on Bowie’s 1970 single “Prettiest Star”). Before long, even Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart and Grand Funk Railroad dabbed on a little glitter.

Bolan followed “Ride a White Swan” and T. Rex by expanding the group to a quartet with bassist Steve Currie and drummer Bill Legend, and cutting a five-minute single, “Hot Love”, with a rollicking rhythm, string accents and an extended sing-along chorus inspired somewhat by the Beatles’s “Hey Jude”. It was No. 1 for six weeks and was quickly followed by “Get It On”, a grittier, more adult tune that spent four weeks in the top spot. The song was renamed “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” when released in the United States, to avoid confusion with another song of the same name by the American band Chase. The song reached #10 in the United States in early 1972, the only top 40 single the band ever had in America.

In November 1971, the band’s record label, Fly, released the Electric Warrior track “Jeepster” without Bolan’s permission. Outraged, Bolan took advantage of the timely lapsing of his Fly Records contract and left to EMI, who gave him his own record label, the T. Rex Wax Co. Its bag and label featured an iconic head-and-shoulders image of Bolan. Despite Bolan’s lack of endorsement, “Jeepster” still peaked at #2.

In 1972, Bolan achieved two more British No. 1s with “Telegram Sam” and “Metal Guru” (the latter of which stopped Elton John getting to the top with “Rocket Man”) and two more No. 2′s in “Children Of The Revolution” and “Solid Gold Easy Action”. The total of four No. 2 singles particularly galled his fans as three were held off the top spot by novelty singles recorded by Clive Dunn, Benny Hill and little Jimmy Osmond. In the same year he appeared in Ringo Starr’s film Born to Boogie, a documentary showing a concert at Wembley Empire Pool on 18 March 1972. Mixed in were surreal scenes shot at John Lennon’s mansion in Ascot and a super-session with T. Rex joined by Ringo Starr on second drum kit and Elton John on piano. At this time T. Rex record sales accounted for about 6 percent of total British domestic record sales. The band was reportedly selling 100,000 records a day; however, no T. Rex single ever became a million-seller in the UK, despite many gold discs and an average of four weeks at the top per No. 1 hit; documentation of actual sales has been lost.[citation needed]

In 1973, Bolan played twin lead guitar alongside his friend Jeff Lynne on the Electric Light Orchestra songs “Ma-Ma-Ma Belle” and “Dreaming of 4000″ (originally uncredited) from On the Third Day, as well as on “Everyone’s Born To Die”, which was not released at the time but appears as a bonus track on the 2006 remaster.

Decline

By late 1973, his pop star fame gradually began to wane, even though he achieved a Number 3 hit, “20th Century Boy” in February and mid year “The Groover” followed it to No. 4. “Truck On (Tyke)” missed the UK Top 10 only reaching #12 in December. However, “Teenage Dream” from the 1974 album Zinc Alloy And The Hidden Riders of Tomorrow showed that Bolan was attempting to create richer, more involved music than he had previously attempted with T. Rex. He expanded the line up of the band to include a second guitarist, Jack Green, and other studio musicians and began to take more control over the sound and production of his records.

In 1974, Bolan played guitar for Ike & Tina Turner. He appeared on “Nutbush City Limits”, “Sexy Ida (Part II)”, and “Baby Get It On”. Tina Turner confirmed this in a BBC Radio One interview.

Eventually, the vintage T. Rex line-up disintegrated. Legend left in 1973 and Finn in 1975 and Bolan’s marriage came to an end because of his affair with backing singer Gloria Jones. He spent a good deal of his time in the U.S. for much of the next three years, continuing to release singles and albums which, while less popular to the masses, were full of unusual lyrics and sometimes eccentric musical experiments. Although Bolan’s health began to fail as he put on weight, the former glam rock icon cleaned up and continued working, producing at least one UK chart hit every year until his death in 1977.

Resurgence

Gloria Jones gave birth to Bolan’s son in September 1975, whom they named Rolan Bolan (although his birth certificate lists him as ‘Rolan Seymour Feld’; compare David Bowie’s son Zowie Bowie). That same year, Bolan returned to the UK from tax exile in the U.S. and Monaco and to the public eye with a low-key tour. Bolan made regular appearances on the LWT pop show Supersonic, directed by his old friend Mike Mansfield and released a succession of singles, but he never regained the success of his glory days of the early 1970s. The last remaining member of Bolan’s halcyon era T. Rex, Currie, left the group in late 1976.

In early 1977, Bolan got a new band together, released a new album, Dandy in the Underworld, and set out on a fresh UK tour, taking along punk band The Damned as support to entice a young audience who did not remember his heyday. Granada Television commissioned Bolan to front a six-part series called Marc, where he introduced new and established bands and performed his own songs. By this time Bolan had lost weight, appearing as trim as he had during T. Rex’s earlier heyday. The show was broadcast during the post-school half-hour on ITV earmarked for children and teenagers; it was a big success. The last episode featured a unique Bolan duet with David Bowie during which Bolan fell off the stage. With no time for a retake, this occurrence was aired and Bowie’s amusement was clearly visible.

Death

Bolan’s shrine, on what would have been his 60th birthday, 30 September 2007.

Bolan died on 16 September 1977, two weeks before his 30th birthday and on the same day as Maria Callas. He was a passenger in a purple Mini 1275GT (registration FOX 661L) driven by Gloria Jones as they headed home from Mortons drinking club and restaurant in Berkeley Square. Jones lost control of the car and it struck a sycamore tree after failing to negotiate a small humpback bridge near Gipsy Lane on Queens Ride, Barnes, southwest London. Bolan died instantly, while Jones suffered a broken arm and broken jaw and spent time in the hospital; she did not learn of Bolan’s death until the day of his funeral. Neither was wearing a seat belt. Bolan’s home, which was less than a mile away at 142 Upper Richmond Road West in East Sheen, was quickly looted. Fans quickly turned the site of the crash into a shrine and in 2007 the site was officially recognised as Bolan’s Rock Shrine

At Bolan’s funeral, attended by David Bowie and Rod Stewart, a swan-shaped floral tribute was displayed outside the service in recognition of his breakthrough hit single. His funeral service was at the Golders Green Crematorium which is a secular provision in North London. Bolan himself stated that he was Jewish, the religion of his father. However, because his mother was not a Jew he would be considered a gentile under Jewish law (Halakha). His ashes were buried at Golders Green Crematorium.

Bolan never learned to drive, fearing a premature death. Despite this fear, cars or automotive components are at least mentioned in, if not the subject of, many of his songs. He also owned a number of vehicles, including a famed white Rolls Royce, which had been lent by his management to Hawkwind on the night of his death.

Fellow T. Rex member Steve Currie also died in a car crash less than four years later.

Equipment

Marc Bolan was mostly seen playing Gibson Les Pauls. His main Les Paul was refinished in an opaque orange to resemble Gretsch guitars played by his hero Eddie Cochran. He was also seen playing a Gibson Flying V with tremolo and a Fender Stratocaster.

Legacy

In 1979, Siouxsie and the Banshees released a cover “20th Century Boy” as the b-side to the single “The Staircase (Mystery)”.

In December 1980, “Telegram Sam” was the fourth single released by British gothic rock band Bauhaus. The A side is a cover of T. Rex’s song of the same name. It was released in 7-and 12-inch format, the latter featuring “Rosegarden Funeral of Sores” as an extra track. The Bongos were the first American group to cover a T. Rex tune, “Mambo Sun” and enter the Billboard charts. Since then, Bongos frontman Richard Barone has recorded several other Bolan compositions, is working with producer Tony Visconti for his forthcoming solo album and has himself produced tracks for Bolan’s son Rolan Bolan.

In 1981, Department S released a cover of “Solid Gold Easy Action” as the b-side to the single “Is Vic There?”.

In 1984, The Replacements released a cover of “20th Century Boy” as a B-side to the single “I Will Dare”; it is also included on the reissue version of their album Let It Be. In 1993, Adam Ant (born, Stuart Leslie Goddard) covered the track live on the Limed Edition live disc of his Antmusic: The Very Best of Adam Ant collection.

In 1985, Duran Duran splinter band Power Station, with Robert Palmer as vocalist, took a version of “Get It On” into the UK Top 40, the first cover of a Bolan song to enter the charts since his death. They also performed the tune (with Michael Des Barres replacing Palmer) at the U.S. Live Aid concert.

In 1986, the Violent Femmes performed “Children of the Revolution” on their third album The Blind Leading the Naked, for which they also recorded a music video.

In 1990, Baby Ford did a cover of “Children of the Revolution” that appeared on the album Oooh, The World of Baby Ford.

In 1994, Billy Idol wore a t-shirt reproducing The Slider album cover in his popular video supporting the song “Speed”. That was a clear homage to Marc Bolan, who helped Generation X to rise at the very beginning of their career.

In 2006 Def Leppard released their album Yeah which are covers of their favourite bands while growing up, the first song on this album is 20th Century Boy. Joe Elliott wanted to sing Metal Guru while Vivian Campbell wanted Telegram Sam but end up agree to 20th Century Boy, it’s not the first time that Def Leppard has sung a T.Rex song, there is a live version of Get It On.

“Children of the Revolution” was similarly performed by Elton John and Pete Doherty at Live 8, 20 years later. Bono and Gavin Friday cover “Children of the Revolution” on the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack.

In 2000, Naoki Urasawa created a manga entitled “20th Century Boys” that was inspired by Marc Bolan’s song, “20th Century Boy”. The book is a multiple award-winner, and has just been released in the United States through VIZ media.

“20th Century Boy” introduced a new generation of devotees to Bolan’s work in 1991 when it was featured on a Levi’s jeans TV commercial featuring Brad Pitt, and was re-released, reaching the UK Top 20. The song was performed by the fictional band The Flaming Creatures (performed by Placebo, reprised by Placebo and David Bowie at the 1999 BRIT Awards) in the 1998 film Velvet Goldmine. In every decade since his death, Bolan has placed a greatest hits compilation in the top 20 UK albums and periodic boosts in sales have come via cover versions from artists inspired by Bolan, including Morrissey and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Similarly, “I Love to Boogie” was briefly used on an advert for Robinson’s soft drink in 2001, bringing Bolan’s music to a new generation. Mitsubishi also featured “20th Century Boy” in a 2002 car commercial, prompting Hip-O Records to release a best-of collection CD titled 20th Century Boy: The Ultimate Collection.

His music is still widely used in films, recent notable cases being Breakfast on Pluto, Death Proof, Lords of Dogtown, Billy Elliot, Jarhead, Moulin Rouge!, Herbie: Fully Loaded, Breaking-Up, Hot Fuzz, Click & School of Rock. Bolan is still cited by many guitar-centric bands as a huge influence (Joy Division/New Order’s Bernard Sumner has said that the first single he owned was “Ride a White Swan”.) However, he always maintained he was a poet who put lyrics to music. The tunes were never as important as the words.

Bolan used to hang around in our office and sit on the floor, strumming his guitar, flirting with our secretary, June, who, of course, he later married. He was a great Syd [Barrett] fan. I was quite fond of him. He was a big pain in the arse, of course, very full of himself. I always liked that thing where he called himself the Bolan child, this magical, mythical name. It was really from his doorbell in Ladbroke Grove. It had his name and our secretary’s surname, Child, so it read Bolan Child and fans used to think, wow, he is the Bolan Child!

Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour,[citation needed]

An altogether less welcome legacy for his friends and family is the ongoing row about his fortune. Bolan had arranged a discretionary trust to safeguard his money. His death left the fortune beyond the reach of those closest to him and both his family and journalists have taken an active interest in investigating the situation, so far with little result other than bringing the story to wider attention. A small, separate Jersey-based trust fund has allowed his son to receive some income. However, the bulk of Bolan’s fortune, variously estimated at between 20 and 30 million pounds (approx $38 $57 million), remains in trust. As of 2007, Bolan’s family is supposed to have a house paid for by the trust, and Rolan is supposed to receive an allowance.

Bolan returned to the top of the UK charts in 2005 when the remastered, expanded Born to Boogie DVD hit No. 1 in the Music DVD charts.

Steve Kilbey a self-confessed Marc Bolan fan and singer for renowned Australian art-rock group The Church performed Bolan’s “One Inch Rock” on the Steve Kilbey Live DVD, released in January 2008.

In 2006, it was revealed that English Heritage had refused to commission a blue plaque to commemorate Bolan, as they believed him to be of “insufficient stature or historical significance”. There is, however, an existing plaque dedicated to Bolan at his childhood home, put there by Hackney Council.

There are also two plaques dedicated to his memory at Golders Green Crematorium in North London. The second one to be displayed was placed there by the official Marc Bolan fan club and fellow fans in September 2002, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his passing. The inscription on the stone, which also bears his image, reads ’25 years on his light of love still shines brightly’. Placed beneath the plaque there is an appropriate ceramic figure of a white swan.

In 2006, TV series Life on Mars, an actor portrays Marc Bolan, circa 1973, in a bar in Manchester. Time-travelling Sam Tyler recognises him, has a fan boy moment, and warns him to be careful of riding in Minis. In the American version of the series, the character is replaced by that of Jim Croce, who died later that year in a plane crash, and Sam warns him. However, the T. Rex version of “Get It On” is played in the New York dance club in that scene.

One of Bolan’s guitars, a Gibson Flying V, recently turned up on Antiques Roadshow in the hands of a private collector. The appraiser estimated the value of the guitar to be approximately 50,000-60,000.

A school is planned in his honour, to be built in Sierra Leone: The Marc Bolan School of Music and Film.[citation needed]

Discography

Singles

Nov. 1965 The Wizard/Beyond The Rising Sun. Decca F 12288.

June 1966. The Third Degree/San Francisco Poet. Decca F 12413.

Dec. 1966. Hippy Gumbo/Misfit. Parlophone R 5539.

John’s Children:

May 1967. Desdemona/Remember Thomas A Beckett. Track 604 003.

July 1967. Midsummer’s Night Scene/Sara Crazy Child.

Aug. 1967. Come And Play With Me In The Garden/Sara Crazy Child. Track 604 005.

Tyrannosaurus Rex:

April 1968. Debora/Child Star.(34). Regal Zono RZ 3008.

Aug. 1968. One Inch Rock/Salamada Palaganda.(28). Regal Zono RZ 3011.

Jan. 1969. Pewtor Suitor/Warlord Of The Royal Crocodiles. Regal Zono RZ 3016.

July 1969. King Of The Rumbling Spires/Do You Remember.(44). Regal Zono RZ 3022.

Jan. 1970. By The Light Of A Magical Moon/Find A Little Wood. Regal Zono RZ 3025.

March 1970. Debora/One Inch Rock/Woodland Bop/Seal Of Seasons.(7). Magnifly ECHO 102.

Dib Cochran And The Earwigs:

1970. Oh Baby/Universal Love. Bell 1121.

T. Rex:

Oct. 1970. Ride a White Swan/Is It Love/Summertime Blues. Fly BUG 1.

Feb. 1971. Hot Love/Woodland Rock/King Of The Mountain Cometh. Fly BUG 6.

July 1971. Get It On (Bang a Gong)/There Was A Time/Raw Ramp. Fly BUG 10.

Nov. 1971. Jeepster/Life’s A Gas. Fly BUG 16.

Jan. 1972. Telegram Sam/Cadillac/Baby Strange. T.Rex Wax 101.

May 1972. Metal Guru/Thunderwing/Lady. EMI Marc 1.

Sept. 1972. Children Of The Revolution/Jitterbug Love/Sunken Rags. EMI Marc 2.

Dec. 1972. Solid Gold Easy Action/Born To Boogie. EMI Marc 3.

March 1973. 20th Century Boy/Free Angel. EMI Marc 4.

June 1973. The Groover/Midnight. EMI Marc 5.

Big Carrot:

Aug. 1973. Blackjack/Squint Eye Mangle. EMI 2047.

T. Rex:

Nov. 1973. Truck On (Tyke)/Sitting Here.(12). EMI Marc 6.

Jan. 1974. Teenage Dream/Satisfaction Pony.(13). EMI Marc 7.

Marc Bolan:

June 1974. Jasper C. Debussy/Hippy Gumbo/The Perfumed Garden Of Gulliver Smith. Track 2094 013.

T. Rex:

July 1974. Light Of Love/Explosive Mouth.(22). EMI Marc 8.

Nov. 1974. Zip Gun Boogie/Space Boogie.(41). EMI Marc 9.

July 1975. New York City/Chrome Sitar.(15). EMI Marc 10.

Sept. 1975. Dreamy Lady/Do You Wanna Dance/Dock Of The Bay.(30). EMI Marc 11.

Nov. 1975. Christmas Bop/Telegram Sam/Metal Guru.(Scheduled for release but canceled). EMI Marc 12.

Feb. 1976. London Boys/Soul Baby.(40). EMI Marc 13.

April 1976. Hot Love/Get It On. Cube BUG 66.

June 1976. I Love To Boogie/Baby Boomerang.(13). EMI Marc 14.

Sept. 1976. Laser Love/Life’s An Elevator.(41). EMI Marc 15.

Marc Bolan and Gloria Jones:

Jan. 1977. To Know Him Is To Love Him/City Port. EMI 2572.

T. Rex:

March 1977. The Soul Of My Suit/All Alone.(42). EMI Marc 16.

May 1977. Dandy In The Underworld/Groove A Little/Tame My Tiger. EMI Marc 17.

Aug. 1977. Celebrate Summer/Ride My Wheels. EMI Marc 18.

See also

Blackhill Enterprises (Peter Jenner and Andrew King)

David Bowie

John’s Children

Gloria Jones

Simon Napier-Bell

References

^ “Feld, Mark”. Births Registered in October, November and December, 1947. London: General Register Office. pp. (page 394). http://content.ancestry.co.uk/Browse/view.aspx?dbid=8964&path=1947.Q4-Oct-Nov-Dec.F.9. Retrieved 2008-10-08.  Scanned image of the original document. Restricted access.

^ The confessions of a society photographer – Allan Warren (Jupiter, London, 1976) ISBN 0904041689 ISBN 9780904041682

^ Dukes, Queens and Other Stories – Allan Warren (New Millenium Books, London, 1999)

^ http://members.cox.net/dregenold/marc/early.html

^ Rhino Records (2008-02-15). “The Replacements Remastered”. Press release. http://www.rhino.com/rzine/pressrelease.lasso?PRID=546. Retrieved 2008-11-23. 

^ Wigg, David (2007-09-20), “My Daddy of Britpop by Marc Bolan’s son”, Daily Mail, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-482969/My-Daddy-Britpop-Marc-Bolans-son.html 

^ Steve Kilbey Live

^ “English Heritage thinks Ignatius Sancho means more to you than Eric Morecambe”. Telegraph.co.uk. 30 December 2006. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/31/nplaques31.xml. Retrieved 2007-01-15. 

Notes

2. Riggs O’Hara interview, Record Collector Magazine, September 1997

3. Mentioned in The Who song “You Better You Bet”, (to the sound of old T-rex)

4. Celebrity Fans include Oasis, David Bowie, and Chris Cummings.

External links

Marc Bolan and T. Rex information website

Marc Bolan School Of Music And Film

Marc Bolan Myspace

Website concerning Marc Bolan’s TV and film appearances.

Marc Bolan and T. Rex information website

Marc Bolan at the Internet Movie Database

Marc Bolan at Find a Grave

v  d  e

T. Rex

Marc Bolan  Mickey Finn  Steve Currie  Bill Legend

Steve Peregrin Took  Miller Anderson  Herbie Flowers  Jack Green  Gloria Jones  Davey Lutton  Tony Newman  Dino Dines

As Tyrannosaurus Rex

My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair… but Now They’re Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows  Prophets, Seers & Sages: The Angels of the Ages  Unicorn  A Beard of Stars

As T. Rex

T. Rex  Electric Warrior  The Slider  Tanx  Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow  Bolan’s Zip Gun  Futuristic Dragon  Dandy in the Underworld

Related articles

Discography  John’s Children  Born to Boogie  Blackhill Enterprises  Great Jewish Music: Marc Bolan  Marc  Mickey Finn’s T-Rex

Persondata

NAME

Bolan, Marc

ALTERNATIVE NAMES

Feld, Mark

SHORT DESCRIPTION

DATE OF BIRTH

1947-9-30

PLACE OF BIRTH

Hackney, East London, England

DATE OF DEATH

1977-9-16

PLACE OF DEATH

Barnes, London, England

Categories: 1947 births | 1977 deaths | Bisexual musicians | English Jews | English male singers | English rock singers | English singer-songwriters | Glam rock | Jewish musicians | LGBT musicians from the United Kingdom | People from Stoke Newington | Road accident deaths in England | Protopunk musiciansHidden categories: Articles needing additional references from October 2008 | All articles needing additional references | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from January 2010 | Articles with unsourced statements from August 2009 | Articles with unsourced statements from October 2008 | Articles with unsourced statements from January 2009

Principle of Operation

Relatively high voltage, high current electricity is passed between two electrodes, spaced apart, creating an electrical arc. Inert gas under pressure is passed through the arc into a sealed container of waste material, reaching temperatures as high as 25,000 F (13,900 C) in the arc column. The temperature a few feet from the torch can be as high as 5,0008,000 F (2,7604,427 C). At these temperatures, most types of waste are broken into basic elemental components in a gaseous form, and complex molecules are separated into individual atoms.

The reactor operates at a slightly negative pressure, meaning that the feed system is complemented by a gaseous removal system, and later a solid removal system. Depending on the input waste (plastics tend to be high in hydrogen and carbon), gas from the plasma containment can be removed as syngas, and may be refined into various fuels at a later stage.

The latest independent review of plasma technology providers was undertaken by Juniper Consulting in 2008, as well as a separate independent review on Alter NRG /Westinghouse technology.

Existing facilities

National Cheng Kung University – Tainan City, Taiwan (PEAT International)

PEAT International constructed a plasma arc waste disposal facility at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Tainan City, Taiwan, which uses its proprietary Plasma Thermal Destruction Recovery method. The facility is able to handle 35 metric tons (3.35.5 short tons) of waste per day from a variety of waste streams, including incinerator fly ash, medical waste, organic industrial process waste and inorganic sludges. It can also process waste consumer batteries and other materials, including heavy metal sludges, and refinery catalysts (waste streams that would generate valuable metal alloys). The facility was constructed as part of a comprehensive resource recovery facility funded by the Taiwanese government, marking the first time the Government of Taiwan committed financial and technical resources to the utilization of plasma technology. It was commissioned in November 2004 and received its operating permit in January, 2005. PEAT has been an active participant in the operations and maintenance of the facility on behalf of NCKU for its research purposes.

Yoshii, Utashinai, and Mihama-Mikata, Japan (Hitachi Metals Ltd.)

Three similar small plants are in operation in Japan a 166-short-ton (151,000 kg) per day “pilot” plant in Yoshii, co-developed by Hitachi Metals Ltd. and Westinghouse Plasma, which was certified after a demonstration period in 19992000; a 165-short-ton (150,000 kg) per day plant in Utashinai City, completed in 2002; and a 28-short-ton (25,000 kg) per day plant commissioned by the twin cities of Mihama and Mikata in 2002. Two similar facilities run by different companies in Australia and Germany closed after changes in senior management.

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (Plasco Energy Group Inc.)

A new and different type of plasma arc waste conversion that uses plasma to refine gases produced during waste conversion, rather than to destroy waste by brute force as do other plasma systems, has yet to show itself to be successful on a full commercial scale. Plasco Energy Group completed a plasma-arc waste demonstration plant in Ottawa, Canada at the Trail Road Landfill, to process 85 metric tons (94 short tons) per day of municipal solid waste. Unlike other plasma waste processing facilities, Plasco Energy Group’s process does not use plasma to destroy waste, but rather to refine gases produced during waste conversion, in order to allow them to be used to run an internal combustion gas engine. On 24 October 2007, the Plasco Trail Road facility began delivering power to the grid.

The Plasco conversion system, which uses plasma to refine gases rather than expose them to extremely high temperatures, and whose liner is composed of refractory brick rather than metal, is not susceptible to premature attack of vessel liners. Plasco’s internal studies claim that its emissions are also much lower than any other thermal waste processing system. By converting waste to CO2 and water, rather than to methane, the greenhouse gas emissions of the process might be much less than competing technologies such as landfills. Plasco Energy is proposing a scaled up residual waste plasma gasification facility for Los Angeles, California.

In an update to local area residents on 6 December 2008, Plasco president Rod Bryden said delays at its facility were caused by malfunctioning machinery, not problems with the waste-to-energy technology.

Faringdon, Oxfordshire, England (Advanced Plasma Power)

Advanced Plasma Power has built a Gasplasma modular test facility in Faringdon, Oxfordshire that uses refuse-derived fuel feedstock to produce hydrogen, syngas, energy and vitrified gravel. APP have also commissioned a commercial test facility in Swindon, Wiltshire and have plans for a larger 100,000-tonnes/yr-sized commercial or municipal gasplasma facility in the UK.

Swindon, Wiltshire APP

The heart of this technology, the Gasplasma process, forms the basis of APP Swindon Plant, the first Gasplasma facility in the world. Gasplasma is the sequential use of gasification, plasma gas treatment, syngas polishing and gas engine power generation.

A full scale plant will treat 100,000 short tons (91,000 t) per annum of municipal waste and produce:

Enough power for 10,000 homes

Enough heat for around 700 homes

over 99% landfill diversion of feedstock with minimal residues and emissions

Increase recycling rates by over 20%

High performance, high-value aggregate glass (trademark Plasmarok)

Novel combination of three existing and proven technologies (termed Gasplasma)

Negative carbon footprint and lowest environmental impact plant and building

A full scale plant will be 150 metres (490 ft) long, 50 metres (160 ft) wide, and along most of its length only 11 metres (36 ft) high. Above the thermal plant, the roof height is about 14 metres (46 ft), and the single exhaust for the engines 10 metres (33 ft) higher, at only 34 metres (110 ft). The building is approximately the size of a supermarket store and operates under a light vacuum, meaning it contains all odors. The entire process occurs within the building.

Planned facilities

St. Lucie County, Florida (GeoPlasma)

The first plasma-based waste disposal system in the USA was announced in 2006 in St. Lucie County, Florida. The county stated that it hopes to not only avoid further landfill, but completely empty its existing landfill 4,300,000 short tons (3,900,000 t) of waste collected since 1978 within 18 years. The plant was scheduled to come into operation in 2009. However, no permits as yet have been submitted for construction. Backers have announced that the facility would produce 600 short tons (540,000 kg) of solid rubble from around 3,000 short tons (2,700,000 kg) of waste per day at 5,500 C (9,900 F). Uncertainties have arisen however regarding the safety of such a facility. The public and environmental threats from incinerators coupled with the uncertainty of the community’s ability to produce such large quantities of waste consistently have led GeoPlasma to submit a new proposal for a much smaller facility that would convert 200 short tons (180 t) of waste per day.

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (Plasco Energy Group Inc.)

A proposed Plasma arc gasifier has been planned for the Metro Vancouver area. However residents of the area have protested. Metro Vancouver is currently conducting an RFP process to determine a long-term solution for waste management. Plasco is not proposing that Metro Vancouver discontinue the RFP process, but rather to establish an interim solution that can quickly address the shortfall in landfill capacity, while also providing a facility that will allow Metro Vancouver to closely scrutinize and evaluate this new technology as part of its long-term decision making process.

Port Hope, Ontario, Canada (Sunbay Energy Corporation)

Utilizing technology licensed from Europlasma, the plasma arc facility proposed for lands in the vicinity of Wesleyville in Port Hope, Ontario (approximately 45 minutes east of Toronto) will handle 400 short tons (360 t) per day of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) and Tire Derived Fuel (TDF). Sunbay Energy is currently obtaining the required approvals from Provincial authorities and intends to have the facility operational during the 4th Quarter of 2009.

Tallahassee, Florida (Green Power Systems)

The city of Tallahassee, Florida has signed the largest plasma arc waste to energy contract (35 MW) to date with Green Power Systems to process 1,000 short tons (910 t) daily from the city and several surrounding counties. Completion of the project is scheduled for October 2010.

Hirwaun, Wales (EnviroParks Limited)

EnviroParks Limited plan (31/9/07) a consortium to build an Organic Park in Tower Colliery at Hirwaun, South Wales. This includes a plasma gasification plant combined with advanced anaerobic digestion to divert municipal solid waste from the landfill. Enviroparks are currently collaborating with partner Europlasma of Bordeaux to provide the plasma gasification unit to the park.

As much as 60 million is being put into the project by EnviroParks Ltd and its partners, to establish organic waste and mixed waste treatment facilities next to the Tower Colliery at Hirwaun. The Hirwaun site itself is large enough for the processing of over 250,000 metric tons (280,000 short tons) of non-hazardous waste a year. Initially, though, an anaerobic digestion plant will be designed to handle 50,000 metric tons (55,000 short tons) of organic wastes a year.

Jackson, Georgia (PR Power Company)

PR Power Co. plans to open a plant south of Atlanta, near Jackson, Georgia, that will use a “plasma torch” to vaporize tires down to their natural elements mainly hydrocarbons and scrap steel. The gases will be converted to electricity for sale to electric utilities and the scrap steel will be sold at an estimated $50 a ton.

Red Deer, Alberta (Plasco Energy Group Inc.)

Plasco is preparing to start construction on a commercial-scale facility in Red Deer, Alberta in the Summer of 2009. This facility, the company’s first commercial plant, is expected to be completed by the end of 2010.

Maharastra Enviro Power Limited, SMSIL Pune, Maharastra India

SMS Infrastructures Limited (SMSIL), Central India largest civil engineering and infrastructure development company, constructed 68 tonne-per-day hazardous waste-to-energy plants, located in Pune, India, that will use Westinghouse Plasma Corporation (WPC) plasma technology and reactor vessel design. Each plant will provide comprehensive disposal services for a wide variety of hazardous waste, and will produce up to 1.6 MW (net) of electricity

The facilities will be the largest plasma gasification WTE plants in the world processing hazardous waste.

Concerns

Numerous municipal plasma arc gas plants (see above) are currently in development, including one for the city of Los Angeles. Practical (limited use of land space for landfills), technological (large-scale use of technology versus small-scale, e.g. plasma arc is currently favored as a means to destroy medical and hazardous waste), logistical (transportation infrastructure requirements) and budgetary considerations can affect the viability of individual projects. It is important to note that no municipal-scale waste disposal plasma arc facilities have as yet been constructed, which could present a considerable technological and budgetary challenge to even the largest municipalities.

An issue regarding plasma systems that rely on high temperatures for processing is in the life of their liners. The liner is an important aspect of separating the high interior temperatures of the plasma system from the [metal] shell of the plasma container. Liners are highly susceptible to both chlorine attack and to local variabilities in [high] temperatures, both of which would be found with typical municipal waste systems, and are not likely to last more than a year in service. This concern can be addressed by using the method demonstrated at the Trail Road Plant in Ottawa, Canada, which requires lower temperatures and a more robust material (brick) for a liner instead of the expensive and fragile metal.

See also

Electric arc

Plasma (physics)

Staged reforming

Waste management

References

^ a b “The Recovered Energy System: Discussion on Plasma Gassification”. http://www.recoveredenergy.com/d_plasma.html. Retrieved 2008-10-20. 

^ “Plasma”. Juniper Consultancy Services Limited. http://www.juniper.co.uk/services/Our_services/plasma.html. 

^ Alter Nrg / Westinghouse Process Review. Juniper Consultancy Services Limited. November 2008. http://www.juniper.co.uk/Publications/alternrg.html. 

^ “National Cheng Kung University – Tainan, Taiwan”. PEAT International. http://www.peat.com/national_cheng.html. Retrieved 2009-04-09. 

^ Williams, Jenkins & Nguyen (2003). “Solid Waste Conversion: A review and database of current and emerging technologies” ([dead link] Scholar search). University of California Davis, Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Special Report prepared for the California Integrated Waste Management Board pursuant to Interagency Agreement IWM-C0172: 23. http://biomass.ucdavis.edu/pages/reports/Conversion-PhaseI_IWM-C0172.pdf. 

^ a b Skoloff, Brian (2006-09-10). “Florida county plans to vaporize landfill trash”. USA Today. Associated Press. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2006-09-10-vaporized-garbage_x.htm. 

^ “About the Project”. A Partnership for a Zero Waste Ottawa. http://www.zerowasteottawa.com/en/About-Project/. Retrieved 2009-04-10. 

^ Czekaj, Laura (7 December 2008). “Mechanical problems plague Plasco”. Ottawa Sun. http://www.ottawasun.com/News/OttawaAndRegion/2008/12/07/7658066-sun.html. Retrieved 28 December 2008. 

^ “Plans unveiled for “breakthrough” plasma plant”. Waste Management News (letsrecycle.com). 2008-02-25. http://www.letsrecycle.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=37&listcatid=217&listitemid=9724. Retrieved 2008-10-20. 

^ “Bid for 60m Welsh organic waste park”. Waste management News (letsrecycle.com). 2007-08-31. http://www.letsrecycle.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=37&listcatid=217&listitemid=9136. 

^ Credeur, Mary Jane (2003-06-14). “Start-up will turn tires into electricity”. Atlanta Business Chronicle. http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2002/06/17/story4.html. 

^ “Plasco forms R&D partnership”. PR Newswire. 2009-02-05. http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-05-2009/0004967195&EDATE=. Retrieved 2009-02-08. 

^ “Plasco moving on schedule”. 2009-06-01. http://www.albertalocalnews.com/reddeeradvocate/news/local/Plasco_moving_on_schedule_46631062.html. Retrieved 2009-07-19. 

External links

Alter NRG Corp, Plasma Gasification

InEnTec Chemical, Sustainable Technology for Industry

Waste-to-Energy Plasma Systems

The Gasification Technologies Council (GTC)

Waste Vitrification Systems Lessons Learned

PopSci.com article on Joseph Longo’s Plasma Converter 2/19/2007

StarTech Environmental, producer of plasma converters.

longer version of above article from panama-guide.com

“How Plasma Converters Work” at www.howstuffworks.com

Can We Turn Garbage Into Energy?: The pros and cons of plasma incineration

Plascon – Plasma arc destruction of organic compounds – greenhouse gases such as refrigerants, ODSs, PCBs, Pesticides

Westinghouse Plasma Corporation, A division of Alter NRG Corp.

Alter NRG Corp, What is Gasification?

Phoenix Solutions Co., Waste Processing

Categories: Sustainable technologies | Plasma processing | Thermal treatment | Waste treatment technologyHidden categories: All articles with dead external links | Articles with dead external links from October 2008

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History

Development and origins

Main article: History of the Bay Area Rapid Transit

Some of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System’s current coverage area was once served by the electrified streetcar and suburban train system called the Key System. This early twentieth century system once had regular trans-bay traffic across the lower deck of the Bay Bridge. By the mid-1950s that entire system had been dismantled in favor of highway travel using automobiles and buses – given the explosive growth of expressway construction. A new rapid-transit system was proposed to take the place of the Key System during the late 1940s, and formal planning for it began in the 1950s. Some funding was secured for the BART system in 1959, and construction began a few years later. The first passenger rail service commenced on a few stretches of track in September 1972. The new BART system was hailed by some authorities as a major step forwards in subway technology.

However, questions arose concerning the safety of the BART system and the huge expenditures necessary for the construction of the BART network. Praise for the new transportation system was not unanimous at first.

Recent history

2006 statistics

Number of vehicles

670

Initial system cost

$1.6 billion

Equivalent cost in 2004 dollars (replacement cost)

$15 billion

Hourly passenger capacity

15,000

Maximum daily capacity

360,000

Average weekday ridership

322,965

Annual gross fare income

$233.65 million

Annual expenses

$581.81 million

Annual profits (losses)

($300 million)

Rail cost/passenger mile (excluding capital costs)

$.323

A recent study shows that along with some Bay Area freeways, some of BART’s overhead structures could be extensively damaged and could potentially collapse in the event of a major earthquake, which is predicted as highly likely to happen in the Bay Area within the next 30 years. Extensive seismic retrofit will be necessary to address many of these deficiencies, although one in particular, the penetration of the Hayward Fault Zone by the Berkeley Hills Tunnel, will be left for correction after any disabling earthquake, with the consequences for in-transit trains, their operators, and their passengers left to chance.

In May 2004, BART became the first transit system in the nation to offer cellular telephone communication to passengers of all wireless carriers on its trains underground. This is in contrast to other systems in United States, which, while having some cellular telephone service, do not provide it for passengers of all the major cell phone carriers. Service was made available for customers of Verizon Wireless, Sprint/Nextel, AT&T Mobility, and T-Mobile in and between the four San Francisco Market Street stations from Civic Center to Embarcadero. In 2005, coverage was made available between Balboa Park and 16th St. Mission. By July 2008, the fifth cell phone network of the Bay Area, MetroPCS, was added. In December 2009, service was expanded to include the Transbay Tube, thus providing continuous cell phone coverage between West Oakland and Balboa Park. Service is planned to be added in downtown Oakland, Berkeley, and the Berkeley Hills Tunnel by the end of the third quarter 2010. Coverage is expected to be added to South San Francisco and San Bruno in 2011. The goal is to provide continuous cell phone and internet service throughout the entire BART system.
Starting on February 20, 2007 BART entered into an agreement to permit a beta test of WiFi Internet access for travelers on the BART system. It initially included the four San Francisco downtown stations; Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell, and Civic Center. To date over 30,000 patrons have utilized the service. The testing and demonstration also includes above ground testing to trains at BART’s Hayward Test Track. The testing and deployment has been extended into the underground interconnecting tubes between the four downtown stations and further. The successful demonstration and testing provided for a 10 year contract with WiFi Rail, Inc. for the services throughout the BART Right Of Way (ROW).
During the months of May 2008 and July 2008 the WiFi service was expanded to include the Transbay Tube and now awaits BART cars which have the necessary WiFi equipment to benefit from the network access.

Since the mid 1990s, BART has been trying to modernize its aging 30-year-old system. The aforementioned fleet rehabilitation is part of this modernization; presently, fire alarms, water-sprinkling systems, yellow tactile platform edge domes, and cemented-mat rubber tiles are being installed. The rough black tiles on the platform edge mark the location of the doorway of approaching trains, allowing passengers to wait at the appropriate locations for the train, instead of waiting until the train arrives to figure out where to board. All faregates and ticket vending machines have also been completely replaced.

In the spring of 2007, BART experimented with a system of placed advertisement panels in the Transbay Tube, and when riders looking at the windows saw what looked to be a moving commercial for what was Reebok’s “Run Easy” campaign.

On April 10, 2007, BART General Manager Tom Margro, who has been BART chief for eleven years, announced his retirement.

In late May, 2007, BART stated its intention to improve non-peak (night and weekend) headways for each line to only 15 minutes. The current 20-minute headways at these times is viewed as a psychological barrier to ridership. June 2007, BART temporarily reversed its position stating that the shortened wait times would likely not happen due to a $900,000 state revenue budget shortfall. Nevertheless, BART eventually confirmed the implementation of the plan by January 1, 2008.

Furthermore, in June 2007, BART suddenly removed all references to implementation of the TransLink payment system from their website. BART spokesperson Marty Moran stated (via email) that TransLink now may be implemented as early as late 2007. Implementation of TransLink on BART was pushed back even further due to disputes regarding the processing of fares between MTC and BART. TransLink was planned to be rolled out simultaneously on BART, SF Muni, and Caltrain in Spring 2008,. TransLink access was rolled out in May of 2009 .

As BART celebrated the 50th anniversary of its creation by the state legislature, the organization’s management announced their plans for the next 50 years. Their vision includes adding a four-bore transbay tube beneath San Francisco Bay that would run parallel and south of the existing tunnel and emerge at the Transbay Transit Terminal to provide connecting service to Caltrain and the proposed future California High Speed Rail system. The four-bore tunnel would provide two tunnels for BART and two tunnels for conventional/high-speed rail. BART’s plan focus is on improving service and reliability in its core system (where density and ridership is highest), rather than extensions into far-flung suburbia. These plans include: a line that would continue from the Transbay Terminal through the South-of-Market, northwards on Van Ness and terminating in western San Francisco along the Geary corridor, the Presidio, or North Beach; a line along the Interstate Highway 680 corridor; and a fourth set of rail tracks through Oakland.

Numerous rail service changes were implemented beginning on January 1, 2008. Among the changes, the trains on the Pittsburg / Bay Point line extended their service to the San Francisco-Oakland airport (SFO airport) station (at all hours of operation), but they did not continue to the end of the line at Millbrae. (Only a very few late-night Pittsburg / Bay Point trains continued on to Millbrae after stopping at the SFO airport station). During weekdays (until 7:00 pm), the trains on the Richmond line continued on to the Millbrae station, but bypassed the SFO airport station; during weeknights and weekends, trains on the Dublin / Pleasanton line continued to Millbrae, but also bypassed the SFO airport station). All of this meant that there would no longer be a direct train connection between the SFO airport and Millbrae, inconveniencing “Caltrain” passengers who wished to travel to the SFO airport. The BART management discontinued this direct rail connection, citing low ridership between Millbrae and the SFO airport. However, they did implement timed transfers at the San Bruno station for passengers who were traveling from the SFO airport to Millbrae.

With continuing budget constraints, it was necessary for BART to cut back on service beyond Daly City. As of September 14, 2009, the following changes have taken place: The Pittsburg/Bay Point line will still terminate at SFO on weekdays until 7:00 pm. After 7:00 pm, and all day on weekends and holidays, service will extend to Millbrae. The Dublin / Pleasanton line will no longer serve the extension, instead terminating at Daly City Station.

In 2008, BART announced that it would install solar power systems on the roofs of its train yards and maintenance facilities in Richmond and Hayward in addition to car ports with rooftop solar panels at its Orinda station. The board lamented not being able to install them at all stations but it stated that Orinda was the only station with enough sun for them to make money from the project.

Current system

Background

A photo of the third rails used on the BART system. Note how the third rail changes location relative to the train upon entering the station and the crossover walkway crossing the trackway. Note the walkway on the left side of the trackway in the distance, which is the emergency walkway for the aerial trackway leading into the Daly City station again, the third rail positioned opposite of this walkway.

BART comprises 104 miles (167 km) of track and 43 stations. The system uses a controversial 5 ft 6 in (1,676 mm) broad rail gauge, as opposed to the 4 ft 8+12 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge predominantly found in railroad systems in the United States. This is the only transit system in the United States using this gauge. The cars are wider than standard transit equipment, but as wide as standard gauge North American passenger cars. The down side is that all maintenance and support equipment must be custom built. Trains can achieve a centrally-controlled maximum speed of 80 mph (130 km/h) and provide a system-wide average speed of 33 mph (53 km/h) with twenty-second station stopping times (dwell times). Trains operate at a minimum length of three cars per California Public Utilities Commission guidelines to a maximum length of 10 cars, spanning the entire 700 feet (213 m) length of a platform. At its maximum length of 710 feet (216 m), BART has the longest train length of any metrorail system in the United States. The system also features car widths of 10.5 feet (3.2 m) (the same width as an Amtrak Metroliner), a maximum gradient of four percent, and a minimum curve radius of 394 feet (120 m) on the main lines .

Electric current is delivered to the trains over a third rail, the position of which alternates relative to the context of the train. Inside stations, the third rail is always on the side furthest away from the passenger platforms. This design feature eliminates the danger of a passenger either falling directly on the third rail, or stepping onto it to climb back to the platform should they fall off. On ground-level trackways, the third rail alternates from one side of the track to the other, providing breaks in the third rail to allow for emergency evacuations across trackways.

Underground tunnels, aerial structures and the Transbay Tube have evacuation walkways and passageways to allow for train evacuation without exposing passengers to easy, inadvertent contact with the third rail, which is located as far away from these walkways as possible. The voltage on the steel third rail is 1000 Volts DC, so there are notices throughout the system warning passengers of its danger. In addition, BART posts notices inside each train car warning of the third rail and the four paddle-like rail contact shoes protruding from the underside of each car by the rail wheel trucks. Other third-rail powered metro systems in the US utilize a lower voltage.

Many of the original system 1970s-era BART stations, especially the aerial stations, feature simple, Brutalist architecture.

Ridership levels

Ridership records have been set during large scale regional-in-scope events such as the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. The records included a Sunday record of 224,500 that coincided with an Oakland A’s baseball game and a weekday record of 405,400 set on September 8, 2008, when both the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Raiders had home games. The one week record for ridership was 2,317,800 between June 23 and June 29, 2008. This broke the previous all time high of 2,301,800 achieved during a closure of the Bay Bridge. BART set an absolute one-day record of 442,000 rides on Thursday, October 29, 2009, following the closure of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge due to the failure of a structural repair.

Problems with Segways on BART

After several high-profile incidents involving Segways, including an incident where a Segway was run over by a train after falling onto the tracks, BART banned them for 45 days until they could regroup and set up a plan to mediate the issue. The consensus reached was the institution of rules similar to bicycles where the Segways would be disallowed during commute hours, except for disabled persons and that the devices could not be on or ridden past the fare gates similar to the rules for all wheeled devices such as skateboards and scooters. Furthermore a permitting system has been established requiring registration for them to be used on the system.

Routes

All routes pass through the city of Oakland, and all but the Richmond Fremont route pass through the Transbay Tube into San Francisco and beyond to Daly City. Most segments of the BART system carry trains of more than one route.

Trains regularly operate on five routes. Unlike most other rapid transit and rail systems around the world, BART lines are generally not referred to by shorthand designations. Although the lines have been colored consistently on BART system maps for more than a decade, they are only occasionally referred to officially by color names, and only rarely referred to in this way by members of the public (e.g., the “Red Line”).

Instead, the five BART lines are generally identified on maps and schedules by the names of their termini:

Fremont Daly City, following a former Western Pacific Railroad right-of-way from Fremont to Oakland, operates Mondays through Saturdays daytime to early evening.

Dublin/Pleasanton Daly City, following Interstate-580 via Castro Valley to San Leandro, where it meets the Fremont-Richmond line, continuing into San Francisco.

Pittsburg/Bay Point SFO/Millbrae, following SR 4, a former Sacramento Northern Railway right-of way, and SR 24 from Bay Point to Oakland, and extending beyond Daly City to San Francisco International Airport. On weeknights and weekends, this line turns around at the airport to continue on to Millbrae.

Richmond Daly City/Millbrae, following a former Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway right-of-way from Richmond to Berkeley, and extending beyond Daly City to Millbrae on weekdays daytime to early evening. On Saturdays, this line operates to Daly City only.

Richmond Fremont, coinciding with the Richmond Millbrae line and the Fremont Daly City line between their termini and Oakland, and operates daily.

The line from San Francisco through Daly City to Millbrae follows a former Southern Pacific railroad right-of-way, which is also served by Caltrain beyond San Bruno.

Hours of operation

The BART system consists of five lines, but most of the network consists of more than one line on the same track. Trains on each line historically ran every fifteen minutes on weekdays and twenty minutes during the evenings, weekends and holidays; however, since a given station might be served by as many as four lines, it could have service as frequently as every three to four minutes. However the system is closed for four hours every night for maintenance, reopening at 4:00 AM each morning, except for Sundays.

As of January 1, 2008, service on every line is at 15-minute intervals except for Saturdays between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., when service is at 20-minute intervals. Also, as of January 1, 2008, BART service begins around 4:00 a.m. on weekdays, 6:00 a.m. on Saturdays, and 8:00 a.m. on Sundays. Service ends every day near midnight with station closings timed to the last train at station. Two of the five lines, the Millbraeichmond and SF/Daly Cityremont lines, do not have night (after 7 p.m.) or Sunday service, but all stations remain accessible by transfer from the other lines. All-Nighter Network service is available when BART is closed. All but six BART stations are served (as well as eight Caltrain stations). BART tickets are not accepted on these buses, and each of the four bus systems charge their own fare, which can be up to $3.50; a four-system ride can cost as much as $9.50 as of 2007.

Fares

Ticket vending machines at the Powell Street Station

Fares on BART are comparable to those of commuter rail systems and are higher than those of most metros, especially for long trips. The fare is based on a formula that takes into account both the length and speed of the trip. A surcharge is added for trips traveling through the Transbay Tube, to San Francisco International Airport, or through San Mateo County, which is not a BART member. Historically and up until only recently, passengers have used refillable paper-plastic-composite tickets, on which fares are stored via a magnetic strip, to enter and exit the system (a similar magnetic strip ticketing system is used on the Washington Metro in Washington, D.C). The exit faregate prints the remaining balance on the ticket each time the passenger exits the station. A paper ticket can be refilled at a ticket machine, the remaining balance on any ticket can be applied towards the purchase of a new one, or a card is simply captured by the exit gate when the balance reaches zero; multiple low value cards can be combined to create a larger value card, but only at specific ticket exchange locations which are located at some BART stations. BART relies on unused ticket values, particularly of patrons discarding low-value cards, as a source of revenue, approximated by some to be as high as $9.9 million.

A standard-fare BART ticket. Notice the initial purchased fare printed parallel to the magnetic strip, and the card’s remaining balance printed on the left, updated upon each exit. Images of older tickets, a blue, new-style ticket, and other color tickets can be found here.

A stored-value smart card fare system, called the TransLink smart card, was rolled out in the fall of 2009. This program was launched to the public in fall 2006 with rollout on AC Transit, Dumbarton Express, and Golden Gate Transit lines. BART previously promoted the EZ Rider card, a pilot program using technology similar in design to the TransLink cards. Both are contactless smart cards, and contain stored value that can be used for fare payments. BART contracted with Cubic Transportation Systems to replace all the faregates with ones that have smart card readers inherently installed. The EZ Rider program is expected to last until September 2010.

The BART minimum fare of $1.75 is charged for trips under 6 miles (9.7 km), such as a trip between two adjacent Berkeley stations. The maximum one-way fare including all possible surcharges is $10.90, the 51 miles (82 km) journey between Pittsburg/Bay Point and San Francisco International Airport. The farthest possible trip, from Pittsburg/Bay Point to Millbrae, costs less because of the additional charge added to airport trips. Passengers without sufficient fare to complete their journey must use an AddFare machine to pay the remaining balance in order to exit the station. Because of the amount of the base fare, traveling between BART stations in downtown San Francisco on BART costs 25 cents less than it does to ride the city’s own light rail system, the MUNI Metro, which is generally slower in covering the same distance. However, MUNI permits around two full hours of riding, including transfers to other MUNI vehicles, whereas BART charges $1.75 for a single journey. There are various quirks in the fare system due to a subsidy being provided to riders traveling between some outlying stations. For example, for a trip from Dublin/Pleasanton to Fremont, it is less expensive to exit the station at the transfer point, Bay Fair, and re-enter the station, instead of staying on the platform, because you would get charged two $1.75 base fares instead of a $4.35 fare from end to end.

BART uses a system of five different color-coded tickets for regular fare, special fare, and discount fare to select groups as follows:

Blue tickets General: the most common type, includes high-value discount tickets

Red tickets Disabled Persons and children aged 4 to 12: 62.5% discount, special ID required (children under the age of 4 ride free)

Green tickets Seniors age 65 or over: 62.5% discount, proof of age required for purchase

Orange tickets Student: special, restricted-use 50% discount ticket for students age 13-18 currently enrolled in high or middle school

BART Plus special high-value ticket with ‘flash-pass’ privileges with regional transit agencies, including MUNI’s buses.

EZ Rider A new plastic smart card fare program that will eventually be replaced by the TransLink Phase II Program

EZ Rider Fare Card

Unlike most transit systems in the United States, BART does not have an unlimited ride pass available and riders must pay for each ride they take. The only discount provided to the public is a 6.25% discount when “high value tickets” are purchased with fare values of $48 and $64, for prices of $45 and $60 respectively. Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor & San Joaquins trains sell $10 BART tickets on-board in the caf cars for only $8, resulting in a 20% discount. A 62.5% discount is provided to seniors, the disabled, and children age 5 to 12. Middle and high school students 13 to 18 may obtain a 50% discount if their school participates in the BART program; however, these tickets are intended to be used only between the students’ home station and the school’s station and for transportation to and from school events. However, these intended limitations are not enforced in any way and students are expected to behave on the honor system. The tickets are only usable on weekdays, a restriction that is enforced by the fare gates. BART Plus tickets enjoy a last-ride bonus where if the remaining value is greater than $.05, the ticket can be used one last time for a trip of any distance. Most special discounted tickets must be purchased at selected vendors and not at ticket machines. The Bart Plus tickets can be purchased at the ticket machines. In particular, the middle and high school tickets are usually sold at the schools themselves.

Family members of BART employees receive special BART passes and can ride free-of-charge upon showing their pass and photo identification to the BART station attendant. Employees of airlines that take BART to work at San Francisco International Airport receive a fare discount of 25%, but non-airline employees who do the same receive no discount.

Ticket gates with the orange triangular doors retracted for a Spare the Air Day

Fares are enforced by the station agent, who monitors activity at the fare gates adjacent to the window and at other fare gates through closed circuit television and faregate status screens located in the agent’s booth. All stations are staffed with at least one agent at all times. Despite this, fare fraud occasionally occurs, usually as a result of people entering and exiting through the emergency exit gate, which are permitted for non-emergency use by passengers with bikes, in wheelchairs, and carrying luggage. It also occurs using elevators, which in some stations lead from the ticketed area to the unticketed area.

There is little fare coordination between BART and surrounding agencies. Some agencies accept the BART Plus pass, which at a fee of between $38 and $71 per month, permits pass holders to use BART and connecting buses. Most notably, AC Transit dropped out of the program due to the small amount of reimbursement they received from BART. Another fare coordination program permits adult monthly pass holders of the San Francisco Municipal Railway to ride BART trains within the city of San Francisco for free (with no credit applied to trips outside the city). The city of San Francisco pays BART $.87 for each trip taken under this arrangement. For riders who do not hold such passes, there is generally only a token discount ($.25 to $.50) provided to passengers transferring to and from trains to other transit modes. The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority does honor BART transfers for a local fare credit ($.50 to $1.75) towards the 120, 140, 180 and 181 trans-county express lines departing the Fremont BART station, but all riders are required to disembark in Santa Clara County. There is no credit applied when traveling towards the Fremont BART Station.

Proposals to simplify the fare structure abound. At one extreme, a flat fare that disregards distance has been proposed by BART director Joel Keller. The lesser extreme involves the implementation of a simplified structure that would create fare bands or zones. The implementation of either scheme would demote the use of distance-based fares and shift the fare-box recovery burden to the urban riders in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley and away from the suburban riders of East Contra Costa, Southern Alameda, and San Mateo Counties, where density is lowest, and consequently, operational cost is highest.

Connecting services

AC Transit bus stop at Bay Fair Station

BART has direct connections to two regional rail services Caltrain, which provides service between San Francisco, San Jose, and Gilroy, at the Millbrae Station, and Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor, which runs from Sacramento to San Jose, at the Richmond and Coliseum/Oakland Airport stations. A third Capitol Corridor connection at the Union City station is planned as part of a larger Dumbarton Rail Corridor Project to connect Union City, Fremont, and Newark to various peninsula destinations via the Dumbarton rail bridge. BART is the managing agency for the Capitol Corridor until 2010.

BART connects to San Francisco’s local light rail system, the Muni Metro. The upper track level of BART’s Market Street subway, originally designed for the lines to Marin County,[citation needed] was turned over to Muni and both agencies share the Embarcadero, Montgomery Street, Powell and Civic Center stations. Some Muni Metro lines connect with (or pass nearby) the BART system at the Balboa Park and Glen Park stations.

Other services connect to BART including the Emery Go Round (Emeryville), WestCAT (north-western Contra Costa County), Benicia Transit (Benicia), Union City Transit (Union City), and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA, in Silicon Valley).

BART hosts carsharing locations at many stations, a program pioneered by City CarShare. Riders can transfer from BART and complete their journeys by car. BART has started to offer long-term airport parking through a third-party vendor at most East Bay stations. Travelers must make an on-line reservation in advance and pay the daily fee of $5 before they can leave their cars at the BART parking lot.

Casual carpools have formed at North Berkeley station and the area around El Cerrito Del Norte station. The lots are convenient since most carpoolers use public transit back to their final destination. However, because of how BART charges for parking, passengers cannot park at most BART lots without paying a fare.

Connecting services via bus

A number of bus transit services connect to BART, which, while managed by separate agencies, are integral to the successful functioning of the system. The primary providers include the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), Alameda-Contra Costa Transit (AC Transit), San Mateo County Transit District (SamTrans), Central Contra Costa Transit Authority (County Connection), and the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District (Golden Gate Transit). Until 1997, BART ran its own “BART Express” connector buses, which ran to eastern Alameda County and far eastern and western areas of Contra Costa County; these routes were later devolved to sub-regional transit agencies such as Tri-Delta Transit and the Livermore Amador Valley Transit Authority (WHEELS) or, in the case of Dublin/Pleasanton service, replaced by a full BART extension.

BART is connected to Oakland International Airport via AirBART shuttle buses, which bring travelers to and from the Coliseum/Oakland Airport BART station. These buses are operated by BART and accept exact-change BART fare cards in addition to exact change. BART also connects to the San Francisco International Airport, though in this case the train actually enters the airport directly and no shuttle is necessary, although connections are available to AirTrain for those not departing or arriving from the international terminal.

The bus service connecting the University of California, Berkeley to the Berkeley BART station was once called Humphrey Go-BART, a spoonerism of the famous actor and director Humphrey Bogart. It has since been replaced by a number of regular AC Transit bus routes and shuttle bus routes operated by the university.

Organization and management

Governance

The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District is a special governmental agency created by the State of California consisting of Alameda County, Contra Costa County, and the City and County of San Francisco. San Mateo County, which hosts six BART stations, is not part of the BART District. It is governed by an elected Board of Directors with each of the nine directors representing a specific geographic area within the BART district. BART has its own police force.

While the district includes all of the cities and communities in its jurisdiction, some of these cities do not have stations on the BART system. This has caused tensions among property owners in cities like Livermore who pay BART taxes but must travel outside the city to receive BART service. In areas like Fremont, the majority of commuters do not commute in the direction that BART would take them (many Fremonters commute to San Jose, where there is currently no BART service). This would be alleviated with the completion of a BART-to-San Jose extension project.

However, some cities and towns are near enough to cities with BART stations that residents commute via a bus or car to the nearest BART station. Emeryville, for instance, has no BART service, but has a free shuttle service, the Emery-Go-Round, that takes passengers to the nearby MacArthur station in Oakland. Similarly, Albany does not have a BART station of its own. The city’s residents can go to either North Berkeley (in Alameda County) or El Cerrito Plaza (in Contra Costa County) stations for services. For those wishing to drive their cars to the stations instead, many BART stations offer many kinds of parking options.

Budget

In 2005, BART required nearly $300 million in funds after fares. About 37% of the costs went to maintenance, 29% to actual transportation operations, 24% to general administration, 8% to police services, and 4% to construction and engineering. In 2005, 53% of the budget was derived from fares, 32% from taxes, and 15% from other sources, including advertising, station retail space leasing, and parking fees. BART’s farebox recovery ratio of 53% is relatively high for a U.S. public transit agency operating over such long distances with high frequency (for comparison, see the article on farebox recovery).

General Manager

196? – 1975

Billy Stokes

1975 – 1978

Frank C. Herringer

1979 – 1988

Keith Bernard

1989 – 1994

Frank Wilson

1994 – 1996

Richard A. White

1996 – 2007

Tom Margro

2007 – Present

Dorothy Dugger

Chief Spokesperson

1972 – 2004

Mike Healy

2004 – present

Linton Johnson

Rolling stock

A refurbished A car interior with carpeted flooring.

Interior of a C1 car with an upgraded spray-on composite flooring.

The interior of a C2 car with carpeted flooring. A flip-up seat is visible on the left.

A Demonstration Car (modified C2 car) interior with blue vinyl flooring. This car has a designated Bike Space in the area normally reserved for passengers in wheelchairs; the front-facing seat on the left-hand side of the car has been removed to accommodate passengers with bicycles, in turn, the aisle-facing seat on the right-hand side near the operator’s cab has been removed to accommodate passengers in wheelchairs. This car also has hand straps, unlike the other BART train cars.

BART operates four types of cars, built from three separate orders, totaling 669 cars.

To run a typical peak morning commute, BART requires 579 cars. Of those, 541 are scheduled to be in active service; the other 38 are used to build up four spare trains (essential for maintaining on-time service). At any one time, the remaining 90 cars are in for repair, maintenance, or some type of planned modification work.

The A cars and the B cars were built from 1968 to 1971 by Rohr Industries, an aerospace manufacturing company which had only recently made its foray into mass-transit equipment manufacturing, touting yet untested space-age design techniques. The A cars were designed as leading or trailing cars only, with a fiberglass operator’s cab housing train control equipment and BART’s two-way communication system. The A cars are distinguished by their aerodynamic leading edge extending 5 feet (1.52 m) longer than their B- and C-car siblings. A cars can comfortably seat 72 passengers, and under crush load, 150 passengers. B cars have no operator’s cab and are used in the middle of trains to carry passengers only; B cars have the same passenger capacity as A cars. Currently, BART operates 59 A cars and 380 B cars. BART’s livery has remained effectively unchanged throughout its history.

The C cars were built by Alstom between 1987 and 1989. The C cars have a similar fiberglass operator’s cab and control and communications equipment as the A cars, but unlike A cars, do not have the aerodynamic nose design, thus allowing them to be used as middle cars as well. The dual purpose of the C cars allows faster train-size changes without having to move the train to a switching yard. C cars can comfortably seat 64 (4 seats were lost compared to the A/B cars by eliminating one row of seats to accommodate the operator cab and 4 additional seats were lost by eliminating one pair of seats next to the left-side forward door on each side to provide space for wheelchairs) and under crush load accommodate 150 passengers. The latest order, from Morrison-Knudsen (now Washington Group International), was for C2 cars, which are essentially the same as C cars, but feature an updated, third-generation interior with a blue/gray motif, in contrast to the previous blue and brown colors. The CCTV cameras on C2 cars are also triangular in shape when compared to the rectangular shape of the camera on a C1 car. C2 cars have flip-up seats near the left-side forward door to accommodate passengers in wheelchairs, and red lights on posts near the door to warn the hearing-impaired when the doors are about to close. C2 cars can comfortably seat 68 passengers (including the flip-up seats), and under crush load can carry 150 passengers. Since the purchase of C2s, the original C cars are also referred to as C1 cars. Currently, BART operates 150 C1 cars and 80 C2 cars.

In 1995, BART contracted with ADtranz (acquired by Bombardier Transportation in 2001) to refurbish and overhaul the 439 original Rohr A- and B-cars, updating the old vintage brown fabric seats to the less-toxic and easier-to-clean, light-blue polyurethane seats in use today and bringing the cars in general to the same level of interior amenities as the C2 fleet. The Rohr cars were also rebuilt with ADtranz 3-phase Alternating Current (AC) traction motors with IGBT inverters, model 1507C. The seven-year project was completed in 2002. All BART cars have upholstered seats and nearly all cars have carpeting except for some C1 and/or C2 cars. Because one of the original design goals was for all BART riders to be seated, the older cars have fewer provisions such as grab bars for standing passengers. Flip-up seats (found in C2 cars) were excluded from the refurbishment (reducing seating capacity from 72 to 68), in order to provide designated areas for luggage, wheelchairs and bicycles. Consequently, the original C (or C1) cars have the oldest interior design, as they have not been refurbished and were not purchased recently enough to have the “newer” convenience features; for example, they lack vertical grab bars in the middle of the car and do not have the in-post red lights to warn of closing doors. However, the carpeted flooring in most of the C1 cars was replaced with an experimental spray-on composite flooring after passengers complained that the cars were unclean.

The A, B, and C cars were all given 3-digit numbers originally, but when refurbished 1000 was added to the number of each individual A/B car (e.g. car 633 would become 1633). The C2 cars are numbered in the 2500 series; the C/C1 cars still have 3-digit numbers.

Prior to rebuilding, the Direct Current (DC) traction motors used on the 439 Rohr BART cars were built by Westinghouse, the same company that also built the automatic train control system for BART. The Westinghouse traction motors are model 1463 with chopper controls. The Westinghouse DC motors are still in use on the Alstom C (C1) and Morrison-Knudsen C2 cars. The motors that were pulled from the Rohr cars during rehabilitation were retained as spare motors for use on the C1 and C2 cars. Other undercar systems also built by Westinghouse on the 439 Rohr BART cars before rehabilitation were the auxiliary power box, the hydraulic pumps for the brakes, the air suspension, and the brake control systems (which were part of the propulsion logic cradle that was mounted in the chopper control semiconductor box). The HVAC system on the Rohr BART cars before rehabilitation were built by Thermo King, when it was a subsidiary of Westinghouse (Thermo King is now a subsidiary of Ingersoll-Rand). The current HVAC systems on the rehabbed Rohr-built Gen 1 cars were built by Westcode.

Comparison with other rail transit systems

Main article: Rapid Transit

BART, like other transit systems of the same era, endeavored to connect outlying suburbs with job centers in Oakland and San Francisco by building out lines that paralleled established commute routes of the region’s freeway system. The majority of BART’s service area, as measured by percentage of system length, consists of low-density suburbs. Unlike the New York City Subway or the London Underground, individual BART lines were not designed to provide frequent local service, as evidenced by the system’s current maximum achievable headway of 13.33 minutes per line through the quadruple interlined section. Muni provides local light-rail and subway service within San Francisco city limits and runs with smaller headways than does BART. BART could in many ways be characterized as a “commuter subway,” since it has many characteristics of a commuter rail system, including lengthy lines that extend to the far reaches of suburbia with significant distances between most adjacent stations. However, in the urban areas of San Francisco and downtown Oakland, multiple lines converge, and BART takes on the characteristics of an urban subway, including short headways and transfer opportunities to other lines.

BART could be considered to be more similar to a regional commuter rail service, such as the Berlin S-Bahn or the Paris RER. However, BART also possesses all the qualities and services of a metro system, including electrified third-rail propulsion, exclusive grade-separated right-of-way, frequent headways in its urban service areas, and pre-paid fare card access. Urban stations are as close as one-half mile (800 m) apart and have combined two and one-half to five-minute service intervals at peak times. These factors contribute to the consideration of BART as a hybrid metro-commuter system, functioning as a metrorail system in the central business districts of San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, and as commuter rail in the region’s suburban areas.

Future stock

A computer graphics rendering of what the new BART car will look like.

To speed up service, BART is preparing to introduce new, three-door cars. BART plans to start purchasing new cars in 2010, when it will have paid off other capital debt for track and car work, with the first 10 pilot cars arriving for testing in 2014. The order will consist of 200 base cars with two additional option orders of 250 cars each for a total of 700 cars to completely replace the original fleet. All 700 cars are to arrive by 2024. There are also two additional options, one for general fleet expansion, and the other for the San Jose extension, with 150 cars each. If all options are exercised, the total number of new BART cars will be 1000 cars.

Future expansion and extension

Main article: Bay Area Rapid Transit expansion

Expansion projects for the Bay Area Rapid Transit have existed ever since the opening of the project. These projects include the Warm Springs extension, the San Jose extension, the Oakland Airport Connector, eBART, ‘tBART’: I-580/Tri-Valley Corridor, ‘wBART’: I-80/West Contra Costa Corridor, and numerous infill stations along the route.

See also

San Francisco Bay Area portal

List of Bay Area Rapid Transit stations

List of rapid transit systems

List of United States rapid transit systems by ridership

List of California railroads

Notes

^ a b “Quarterly Weekday Average Exits” (PDF). San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District. http://www.bart.gov/docs/station_exits_quarterly.pdf. Retrieved 2008-11-05. 

^ a b “History of BART (1946-1972)”. BART. http://www.bart.gov/about/history/history_1.asp. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ See BART Composite Report, prepared by Parsons Brinkerhof Tutor Bechtel, 1962

^ “BART- Not a Moment Too Soon”. Los Angeles Times. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/684558862.html?dids=684558862:684558862&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Sep+13,+1972&author=&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=BART—Not+a+Moment+Too+Soon&pqatl=google. Retrieved 2009-08-22. 

^ “BART First in Operation: 2nd great subway boom under way in many cities”. The Bulletin. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=3qgSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=g_cDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3354,4929895&dq=bart. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ “Safe Automated BART Train Controls Doubted”. Los Angeles Times. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/660715472.html?dids=660715472:660715472&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Nov+15,+1972&author=&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=Safe+Automated+BART+Train+Controls+Doubted&pqatl=google. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ “BART Manager Denies System Was Overcharged by Designers”. Los Angeles Times. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/660721622.html?dids=660721622:660721622&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Nov+16,+1972&author=&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=BART+Manager+Denies+System+Was+Overcharged+by+Designers&pqatl=google. Retrieved 2009-08-22. 

^ “BART Earthquake Safety Program”. BART. http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/earthquakesafety.asp. Retrieved 2006-05-08. 

^ Michael Cabanatuan (November 19, 2005). “Underground, but not unconnected — BART offers wireless service to riders”. San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/19/MNGF2FR6C11.DTL. Retrieved 2007-01-22. 

^ Underground cell phone coverage on BART expands, BART, July 21, 2008. Retrieved 2008-08-18.

^ BART expands wireless access to Transbay Tube, BART, December 21, 2009. Retrieved 2009-12-21.

^ WiFi Rail Inc. to provide wifi access on BART system. BART. February 2009. http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2009/news20090202.aspx. Retrieved 2009-02-02. 

^ WiFi Rail Tube Access. KRON 4. June 2009. http://www.wifirail.net/clips/kron4.com_061809.mov. Retrieved 2009-06-18. 

^ “BART bond might make ballot in fall”. Oakland Tribunal. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=OKTB&p_theme=oktb&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0F99357E1F56EF7F&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ Gordon, Rachel (2007-04-11). “Head of BART plans to resign”. San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/11/BAGKMP6G331.DTL. Retrieved 2007-10-26. 

^ Cuff, Denis (2007-05-29). “BART board wants to lessen waits”. Contra Costa Times. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN/message/35220. Retrieved 2007-10-26. 

^ “Good move by BART”. Contra Costa Times. 2007-10-01. http://www.contracostatimes.com/opinion/ci_7051537. Retrieved 2007-10-26. 

^ Metz, Adam (2007-06-19). “BART’s “customer response” to Blogger Emails doesn’t answer ?’s”. The Oakland Review. http://oaklandreview.vox.com/library/post/barts-customer-response-to-blogger-emails-doesnt-answer-s.html. Retrieved 2007-10-26. 

^ “MTC — Services — Translink”. MTC Website. 2007-09-14. http://www.mtc.ca.gov/services/translink/. Retrieved 2008-01-16. 

^ “TransLink passes all BART tests, ready for summertime launch”. BART website. 2009-05-08. http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2009/news20090325.aspx. Retrieved 2010-01-31. 

^ Cabanatuan, Michael (2007-06-22). “BART’S New Vision: More, Bigger, Faster”. San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/06/22/MNGJQQJVSD1.DTL. Retrieved 2007-10-26. 

^ a b BART goes solar at Orinda station, by Dennis Cuff, Contra Costa Times, July 10, 2008, access date July 13, 2008

^ “BART System Facts”. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District. http://www.bart.gov/about/history/systemFacts.asp. Retrieved 2008-04-23. 

^ “BART Train length”. Google Groups: ba.transportation. July 3, 2000. http://groups.google.com/group/ba.transportation/browse_frm/thread/2b50a587214ace23/5be1c19d04ad4b06. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ Paul Garbutt (1997). “Facts and Figures”. World Metro Systems. Capital Transport. pp. 130131. ISBN 1854141910. 

^ “BART – Car types”. BART. http://www.bart.gov/about/history/cars.aspx. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ “BART: Passenger Panic Worsened Tunnel Fire”. CBS. http://cbs5.com/local/BART.evacuation.fire.2.441245.html. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ a b Pride parade helps set BART ridership records, BART News, July 1, 2008 access date August 18, 2008

^ a b 09.09.2008 BART sets ridership record with Monday’s sports events

^ 11.01.2009 BART customers continue to set ridership records

^ a b c Pilot program approved for Segway use on BART, BART News, August 15, 2008, accessed August 18, 2008

^ “BART to run on Sunday schedule Christmas Day”. BART. December 21, 2006. http://www.bart.gov/news/press/news20061221a.asp. Retrieved 2007-01-22. 

^ “Why doesn’t BART run 24 hours?”. BART. http://www.bart.gov/guide/latenight.aspx. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ “BART – Overview”. BART. http://www.bart.gov/guide/index.aspx. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ “BART Service Hours, Holiday Schedule”. BART. http://www.bart.gov/guide/overview/hours.asp. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ “All Nighter Bus Service”. 511 SF Bay Area Travel Guide. http://transit.511.org/providers/night.asp. Retrieved 2007-05-17. 

^ “BART Unveils Modern Fare Gates and New Ticket Vending Machines”. Business Wire. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/BART+Unveils+Modern+Fare+Gates+and+New+Ticket+Vending+Machines-a092914818. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ “BART ticket refunds and exchanges”. BART. http://www.bart.gov/tickets/sales/refunds.asp. Retrieved 2007-01-22. [

^ Jon Carroll (December 6, 2000). "Tiny Tickets Ha Ha Ha Ha". The San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/12/06/DD140623.DTL. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ "TransLink on BART". TransLink. http://www.translink.org/TranslinkWeb/bart/index.do;jsessionid=xiN0e+gtNElOU777mW-I2Q**. Retrieved 2009-12-18. 

^ Andrew F. Hamm (January 6, 2006). "TransLink program again tries to unify Bay Area transit fares". Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. http://www.bizjournals.com/eastbay/othercities/sanjose/stories/2006/01/09/story6.html. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ "TransLink where can I use TransLink?". TransLink. http://www.translink.org/whereCanIuseTranslink.do. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ "Press Release: Cubic Receives $7 Million Contract to Link BART To San Francisco Bay Area's Regional Smart Card Program". Cubic Transportation Systems, Inc. 2004-02-24. http://www.cubic.com/cts/PressReleases/Feb24-2004.htm. Retrieved 2008-01-16. 

^ "BART Translink Transition Plan". BART. 2009-08-12. http://apps.mtc.ca.gov/meeting_packet_documents/agenda_1342/BART_TL_Transition_Plan.pdf. Retrieved 2009-12-18. 

^ "QuickPlanner >> Results between Downtown Berkeley and North Berkeley". BART. http://bart.gov/stations/quickplanner/schedule.asp?origin=BRK&format=quick&destination=NBRK&trip_mode=undefined&time_mode=departs&depart_month=6&depart_date=12&return_page=/index.asp&depart_time=2:30+PM&new=yes&dhtml=true. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ "QuickPlanner >> Results between Pittsburg/Bay Point and SFO". BART. http://bart.gov/stations/quickplanner/schedule.asp?origin=BAYPT&format=quick&destination=SFIA&trip_mode=undefined&time_mode=departs&depart_month=12&depart_date=5&return_page=/index.asp&depart_time=2:30+PM&new=yes&dhtml=true. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ "BART Ticket Types". BART. http://bart.gov/tickets/types/types.asp. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ (PDF) Capitol Corridor Ride Guide. The Capitol Corridor. http://www.capitolcorridor.org/included/docs/ccjpa/ride_guide.pdf. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ "The Capitol Corridor: BART Connections". The Capitol Corridor. http://www.capitolcorridor.org/schedules/transit_connections/BART_connections.php. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ (PDF) Short range transit plan & capital improvement program (FY06 through FY15). BART. November 2005. http://www.bart.gov/docs/Draft_FY06_SRTP_CIP.pdf. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ "Today free lecture: fare idea falls flat". Inside Bay Area. September 19, 2006. http://www.ibabuzz.com/transportation/2006/09/19/todays-free-lecture-fare-idea-falls-flat. Retrieved 2007-01-22. 

^ "Dumbarton Rail Corridor". San Mateo County Transit Authority. http://www.smcta.com/Dumbarton_Rail/information.asp. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ "BART again selected as managing agency for Capitol Corridor". BART. February 28, 2005. http://www.bart.gov/news/press/news20050228.asp. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ "Long-Term Parking for Travelers". BART. http://www.bart.gov/guide/parking/longterm.asp. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ "Bart Express Connecting Bus Service". ALL-Transit.com. http://www.all-transit.com/rosters/bart-r-2.htm. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ "BART Board Acts On Oakland Airport Connector". BART. http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2009/news20090427.aspx. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ "Myths, gods, and titanic disasters: How servers really get their names". IT World. http://www.itworld.com/offbeat/63716/myths-gods-and-titanic-disasters-how-servers-really-get-their-names?page=0,3. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ "BART Police". BART. http://www.bart.gov/about/police/. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ "BART's Livermore role reviewed". Contra Costa Times. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=CC&s_site=contracostatimes&p_multi=CC&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=1064A15771213A81&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ "BART parking overview". BART. http://bart.gov/guide/parking/overview.asp. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ (PDF) BART 2005 Annual Report. http://www.bart.gov/docs/AR2005.pdf.  (TXT) BART 2005 Annual Report. BART.gov. http://www.bart.gov/docs/AR2005.txt. Retrieved 2007-01-07. 

^ ""Why can't the trains be longer?" Some background to explain". BART. 2008-09-25. http://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2008/news20080924a.aspx. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ "FY08 Short Range Transit Plan and Capital Improvement Program" (PDF). BART. September 2007. http://www.bart.gov/docs/FINAL_FY08_SRTP_CIP.pdf. Retrieved 2007-11-11. 

^ "BART Car ills". San Jose Mercury News. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SJ&s_site=mercurynews&p_multi=SJ&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB731C25CCAA9D1&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ "BART Renovation Program Nearing Completion". Business Wire. http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-26087660_ITM. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ Westcode

^ W. S. Homburger. "The impact of a new rapid transit system on traffic on parallel highway facilities". 1029-0354, Volume 4, Issue 3 (Transportation Planning and Technology). http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/ftinterface?content=a773502237&rt=0&format=pdf. Retrieved 2009-08-24. 

^ "Glossary of Transit Terminology". American Public Transportation Association. http://www.apta.com/research/info/online/glossary.cfm. Retrieved 2008-02-27. 

^ "Passenger Rail Issues". East Bay Bicycle Coalition. http://www.ebbc.org/rail/sjx.html. Retrieved 2007-01-22. 

^ "Rapid transit". Merriam-Webster. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rapid transit. Retrieved 2008-02-27. ; "Metro". International Association of Public Transport. http://www.uitp.org/Public-Transport/metro/index.cfm. Retrieved 2008-02-27. 

^ "BART plans on $3.4B for new cars". ABC News. http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=resources/traffic&id=6800819. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ "Official BART information on new car purchase project". BART. http://bart.gov/about/projects/cars/index.aspx. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

^ "Green Beat: BART Cars To Receive Overdue Upgrade". CBS. http://cbs5.com/environment/bart.future.upgrade.2.774054.html. Retrieved 2009-08-21. 

^ "BART opens bids on project, moves a step closer to Silicon Valley". Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2009/03/09/newscolumn1.html?b=1236571200^1789847. Retrieved 2009-08-23. 

References

BART: a study of problems of rail transit. California. Legislature. Assembly. Committee on Transportation. 1973. 

Richard Grefe (1976). A history of the key decisions in the development of Bay Area Rapid Transit. National Technical Information Service. 

E. Gareth Hoachlander (1976). Bay Area Rapid Transit: who pays and who benefits?. University of California. 

Further reading

Owen, Wilfred (1966). The metropolitan transportation problem. Anchor Books. 

Cervero, Robert (1998). The transit metropolis: a global inquiry. Island Press. ISBN 1559635916. 

University of California (1966). The San Francisco Bay area: its problems and future, Volume 2. University of California. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: BART

BART - official website

Engineering Geology of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) System, 1964-75

BART Map/Schedule Map/Schedule using Google Maps API

BART widget, a self-contained trip planner for Mac OS X Dashboard

BARTsmart Another BART Widget, featuring BART schedules and news

Map of BART and rail network in simplified diagrammatic, rather than geographically accurate

iSubwayMaps.com iPod, alternative predating official BART offering (map only)

Typographica BART Wayfinding October 8, 2005 article about typography of BART signage

Shuttles serving BART stations at 511.org

Pictures of BART on world.nycsubway.org

Network map (real-distance)

 

Links to related articles

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Life and career

Early life

Peart was born on his family’s farm in Hagersville, on the outskirts of Hamilton. The first child of four, his brother Danny and sisters Judy and Nancy were born after the family moved to St. Catharines when Peart was two. At this time his father became parts manager for Dalziel Equipment, a farm machinery supplier. In 1956 the family moved to the Port Dalhousie area of the town. Peart attended Gracefield School, and describes his childhood as happy and says he experienced a warm family life. By early adolescence he became interested in music and acquired a transistor radio, which he would use to tune into pop music stations broadcasting from Toronto, Hamilton and Welland, Ontario and Buffalo, USA.

His first exposure to musical training came in the form of piano lessons, which he later said in his instructional video A Work in Progress did not have much impact on him. He had a penchant for drumming on various objects around the house with a pair of chopsticks, so for his 13th birthday, his parents bought him a pair of drum sticks, a practice pad and some lessons, with the promise that if he stuck with it for a year, they would buy him a kit.

His parents bought him a drum kit for his 14th birthday and he began taking lessons from Don George at the Peninsula Conservatory of Music. His stage debut took place that year at the school’s Christmas pageant in St. Johns Anglican Church Hall in Port Dalhousie. His next appearance was at Lakeport High School with his first group, The Eternal Triangle. This performance contained an original number entitled “LSD Forever”. At this show he performed his first solo.

Peart got a job in Lakeside Park, a fairground on the shores of Lake Ontario, which later inspired a song of the same name on the Rush album Caress of Steel. He worked on the Bubble Game and Ball Toss, but his tendency to take it easy when business was slack resulted in his termination. By his late teens, Peart had played in local bands such as Mumblin Sumpthin, the Majority, and JR Flood. These bands practiced in basement recreation rooms and garages and played church halls, high schools and roller rinks in towns across Southern Ontario such as Mitchell, Seaforth, and Elmira. They also played in the northern Ontario city of Timmins. Tuesday nights were filled with jam sessions at the Niagara Theatre Centre.

Career before joining Rush

At eighteen years of age, after struggling to achieve success as a drummer in Canada, Peart traveled to London hoping to further his career as a professional musician. Despite playing in several bands and picking up occasional session work, he was forced to support himself by selling trinkets to tourists in a souvenir shop called The Great Frog on Carnaby Street.

While in London he came across the writings of novelist and objectivist Ayn Rand. Rand’s writings became a significant philosophical influence on Peart, as he found many of her treatises to individualism and Objectivism inspiring. References to Rand’s philosophy can be found in his lyrics, most notably “Anthem” from 1975′s Fly By Night and “2112″ from 1976′s 2112.

After eighteen months of dead-end musical gigs, and disillusioned by his lack of progress in the music business, Peart placed his aspiration of becoming a professional musician on hold and returned to Canada. Upon returning to St. Catharines, he worked for his father selling tractor parts at Dalziel Equipment.

Joining Rush

After returning to Canada, Peart was recruited to play drums for the St. Catharines band Hush, who played on the South Ontario bar circuit. Soon after, a mutual acquaintance convinced Peart to audition for the Toronto-based band Rush, which needed a replacement for its original drummer John Rutsey. Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson oversaw the audition. His future band mates describe his arrival that day as somewhat humorous, as he arrived in shorts, driving a battered old car with his drums stored in trashcans. Peart felt the entire audition was a complete disaster. While Lee and Peart hit it off on a personal level (both sharing similar tastes in books and music), Lifeson had a less than favorable impression of Peart. After some discussion, Lee convinced Lifeson that Peart’s maniacal British style of drumming, reminiscent of The Who’s Keith Moon, was what the band needed.

Peart officially joined the band on July 29, 1974, two weeks before the group’s first US tour. Peart procured a silver Slingerland kit which he played at his first gig with the band, opening for Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann in front of over 11,000 people at the Civic Arena, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 14, 1974.

Early career with Rush

Peart soon settled into his new position, also becoming the band’s primary lyricist. Before joining Rush, he had written few songs, but, with the other members largely uninterested in writing lyrics, Peart’s previously underutilized writing became as noticed as his musicianship. The band was still finding its feet as a recording act, and Peart, along with the rest of the band, now had to learn to live from a suitcase.

His first recording with the band, 1975′s Fly by Night, was fairly successful, winning the Juno Award for most promising new act, but, the follow up, Caress of Steel, for which the band had high hopes, was greeted with hostility by both fans and critics. In response to this negative reception, most of which was aimed at the B side spanning epic “The Fountain of Lamneth”, Peart responded by penning “2112″ on their next album of the same name in 1976. The album, despite record company indifference, became their breakthrough and gained a following in the United States. The supporting tour culminated in a three night stand at Massey Hall in Toronto, a venue Peart had dreamed of playing in his days on the Southern Ontario bar circuit and where he was now introduced as “The Professor on the drum kit” by Lee.

Peart returned to England for Rush’s Northern European Tour and the band stayed in the United Kingdom to record the next album, 1977′s A Farewell to Kings in Rockfield Studios in Wales. They returned to Rockfield to record the follow up, Hemispheres, in 1978, which they wrote entirely in the studio. The recording of five studio albums in four years, coupled with as many as 300 gigs a year, convinced the band to take a different approach thereafter. Peart has described his time in the band up to this point as “a dark tunnel.”

From this point on, Peart’s career was near exclusively with Rush:

For more details on this topic, see Rush (band).

Play style reinvention

In 1992, Peart was invited by Buddy Rich’s daughter, Cathy Rich, to play at the Buddy Rich Memorial Scholarship Concert in New York City. Though initially intimidated by the request, Peart accepted the offer and performed for the first time with the Buddy Rich Big Band. Feeling that his performance left much to be desired, Peart decided to produce and play on two Buddy Rich tribute albums titled Burning for Buddy: A Tribute to the Music of Buddy Rich in 1994 and 1997 in order to regain his aplomb.

Peart wrote on his personal website that “And yet…I still had a nagging feeling that when I played in that style, I was just imitating it, not really feeling it properly. As the old Duke Ellington standard goes, ‘It don mean a thing, if it ain got that swing’, and I didn think I did.”

In early 2007, Peart and Cathy Rich again began discussing yet another Buddy tribute concert. In response, Peart decided to once again augment his swing style with formal drum lessons, this time under the tutelage of another pupil of Freddie Gruber, Peter Erskine, himself an instructor of drummer Steve Gadd. On October 18, 2008, Peart once again performed at the Buddy Rich Memorial Concert at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom.

Family tragedy & continuing on

Soon after the culmination of Rush’s Test For Echo Tour on July 4, 1997, Peart’s first daughter and then-only child, 19-year-old Selena Taylor, was killed in a single-car accident on Highway 401 near the town of Brighton, Ontario on August 10. His common-law wife of 22 years, Jacqueline Taylor, succumbed to cancer only 10 months later on June 20, 1998. Peart, however, maintains that her death was the result of a “broken heart” and called it “a slow suicide by apathy. She just didn’t care.”

In his book Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road, Peart writes of how he had told his bandmates at Selena’s funeral, “consider me retired.” Peart took a hiatus to mourn and reflect, during which time he traveled extensively throughout North America on his BMW motorcycle, covering 88,000 km (55,000 miles). After his journey ended, Peart decided to return to the band. Peart wrote Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road as a chronicle of his geographical and emotional journey.

While Peart was visiting long-time Rush photographer Andrew MacNaughtan in Los Angeles, MacNaughtan introduced Peart to his future wife, photographer Carrie Nuttall. They married on September 9, 2000. In early 2001, Peart announced to his bandmates that he was ready to return to recording and performing. The product of the band’s return was the 2002 album Vapor Trails. At the start of the ensuing tour in support of the album, it was decided amongst the band members that Peart would not take part in the daily grind of press interviews and “Meet and Greet” sessions upon their arrival in a new city that typically monopolize a touring band’s daily schedule. While Peart has always shied away from these types of in-person encounters, it was decided that having to needlessly expose him to an endless stream of questions about the tragic events of his life was quite unnecessary.

Since the release of Vapor Trails and reuniting with his fellow band mates, Peart has returned to work as a full-time musician. Rush has since released a cover EP, Feedback in June 2004 and their 18th studio album Snakes & Arrows in May 2007, which were supported by three additional tours in 2004, 2007, and 2008.

In the June 2009 edition of Peart’s News, Weather, and Sports, entitled “Under the Marine Layer”, he announced that he and Nuttall were expecting their first child. Peart and Nuttall’s first child, Olivia Louise Peart, was born on August 12, 2009.

Musicianship

Style and influences

Peart (right, behind Geddy Lee) performing with Rush.

Peart is consistently ranked as one of the greatest rock drummers by fans, fellow musicians, and magazines. His influences are eclectic, ranging from John Bonham, Michael Giles, Phil Collins, Steve Gadd, and Keith Moon, to fusion and jazz drummers Billy Cobham, Buddy Rich, Bill Bruford and Gene Krupa. The Who was the first group that inspired him to write songs and play the drums. Peart is distinguished for playing “butt-end out”, reversing stick orientation for greater impact and increased rimshot capacity. “When I was starting out”, Peart later said, “if I broke the tips off my sticks I couldn’t afford to buy new ones, so I would just turn them around and use the other end. I got used to it, and continue to use the heavy end of lighter sticks – it gives me a solid impact, but with less ‘dead weight’ to sling around.”

Peart had long played just matched grip, however, he decided to shift to traditional as part of his style reinvention in the mid-1990s under the tutelage of jazz coach Freddie Gruber. Shortly after the filming of his first instructional DVD A Work in Progress, Peart went back to using primarily matched, though he does switch back to traditional when playing songs from Test for Echo and during moments when he feels traditional grip is more appropriate, such as the rudimentary snare drum section of his drum solo. He discusses the details of these switches in the DVD Anatomy of a Drum Solo.

Equipment

Neil Peart and his 360 degree drumkit

With Rush, Peart has played Slingerland, Tama, Ludwig, and Drum Workshop drums, in that order.

Historically he has played Zildjian A-series cymbals along with Wuhan china cymbals. In the early 2000s, Peart moved away from Zildjian and Wuhan and began exclusively using Paragon, a line created for him by Sabian. In concert, Peart uses an elaborate 360-degree drum kit, with a large acoustic set in front and electronic drums to the rear.

Neil Peart began incorporating Simmons Electronic Drums beginning with 1984′s Grace Under Pressure

During the late 1970s, Peart augmented his acoustic setup with diverse percussion instruments including orchestra bells, tubular bells, wind chimes, crotales, timbales, timpani, gong, temple blocks, bell tree, triangle, and melodic cowbells. Since the mid-1980s, Peart has replaced several of these pieces with MIDI trigger pads. This was done in order to trigger sounds sampled from various pieces of acoustic percussion that would otherwise consume far too much stage area. Some purely electronic non-instrumental sounds are also used. One classic MIDI pad used is the Malletkat Express which is a two-octave electronic MIDI device that resembles a xylophone or piano. The Malletkat Express is composed of rubber pads for the “keys” so that any stick can be used. Beginning with 1984′s Grace Under Pressure, he used Simmons electronic drums in conjunction with Akai digital samplers. Peart has performed several songs primarily using the electronic portion of his drum kit. (e.g. “Red Sector A”, “Closer to the Heart” on A Show of Hands (video) and “Mystic Rhythms” on R30.) Peart’s drum solos also feature sections performed primarily on the electronic portion of his kit.

Shortly after making the choice to include electronic drums and triggers, Peart added what has become another trademark of his kit: his rotating drum riser. During live Rush shows, the automated rotating riser allows Peart to swap dynamically the prominent portions of the kit (“front”, traditional kit; and “back” electronic kit). A staple of Peart’s live drum solos has been the in-performance rotation-and-swap of the front and back kits as part of the solo itself. This special effect simultaneously provides a symbolic transition of drum styles within the solo and provides a visual treat for the audience.

In the early 2000s, Peart began taking full advantage of the advances in electronic drum technology; primarily incorporating Roland V-Drums and continued use of samplers with his existing set of acoustic percussion. Peart’s digitally sampled library of both traditional and exotic sounds has grown over the years with his music.

In April 2006, Neil took delivery of his third DW set, configured similarly to the R30 set, in a Tobacco Sunburst finish over curly maple exterior ply, with chrome hardware. He refers to this set as the “West Coast kit”, as he uses it when in Los Angeles. Besides using it on recent recordings with Vertical Horizon, he played it while composing parts for Rush’s latest studio album, Snakes & Arrows. It features a custom 23″ bass drum; all other sizes remain the same as the R30 kit.

On March 20, 2007 Peart revealed that Drum Workshop prepared a new set of red-painted DW maple shells with black hardware and gold “Snakes & Arrows” logos for Neil to play on the Snakes & Arrows Tour.

Solos

Peart is often regarded as one of the finest practitioners of the in-concert drum solo. He is known for extensive, intricate drum solos containing odd time signatures, complex arrangements (sometimes total separation between upper and lower limb patterns: e.g. an ostinato dubbed “The Waltz”), and exotic percussion instruments. These solos have been featured on every live album released by the band. On the early live albums (All the World’s a Stage & Exit…Stage Left), the drum solo was included as part of a song. On all subsequent live albums, the drum solo has been included on a separate track. His most recent instructional DVD, Anatomy of a Drum Solo, is an in-depth examination of how he constructs a solo. He uses his solo from the 2004 R30 30th anniversary tour as the basis for examination, along with other lectures and demonstrations on how to construct a drum solo that is musical instead of indulgent.

Lyrics

Peart is also the main lyricist for Rush. Literature has always heavily influenced his writings and, as such, he has tackled a wide range of subjects. In his early days with Rush, much of his lyrical output was influenced by fantasy, science fiction, mythology and philosophy. However, nearly as much would deal with real world or personal issues such as life on the road and parts of his adolescence.

The song “2112″ focuses on the struggle of an individual against the collectivist forces of a totalitarian state. This became the band’s breakthrough release, but also brought unexpected criticism, mainly because of the credit of inspiration Peart gave to Ayn Rand in the liner notes. “There was a remarkable backlash, especially from the English press, this being the late seventies, when collectivism was still in style, especially among journalists,” Peart said. “They were calling us ‘Junior fascists’ and ‘Hitler lovers.’ It was a total shock to me”.

Weary of accusations of fascism or ideological fealty to Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, Peart has sought to remind listeners of his eclecticism and independence in interviews. He did not, however, try to argue in defense of Rand’s views: “For a start, the extent of my influence by the writings of Ayn Rand should not be overstated. I am no one’s disciple.”

The 1980 album Permanent Waves saw Peart cease to use fantasy literature or ancient mythology in his writing. 1981′s Moving Pictures showed that Peart was still interested in heroic, mythological figures, but would now place them firmly in a modern and reality-based context. The song “Limelight” from the same album is an autobiographical account of Peart’s reservations regarding his own popularity and the pressures with fame. From Permanent Waves onward, most of Peart’s lyrics began to revolve around social, emotional, and humanitarian issues, usually from an objective standpoint and employing the use of metaphors and symbolic representation.

1984′s Grace Under Pressure strings together such despondent topics as the Holocaust (“Red Sector A”) and the death of close friends (“Afterimage”). Starting with 1987′s Hold Your Fire and including 1989′s Presto, 1991′s Roll the Bones, and 1993′s Counterparts, Peart would continue to explore diverse lyrical motifs, even addressing the topic of love and relationships (“Open Secrets”, “Ghost of a Chance”, “Speed of Love”, “Cold Fire”) a subject which he purposefully eschewed in the past because of what he perceived as an inherent hackneyed stereotype. However, 2002′s Vapor Trails was heavily devoted to speaking about Peart’s personal issues, combined with other humanitarian topics such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks (“Peaceable Kingdom”). The band’s most recent album Snakes & Arrows deals primarily and vociferously with Peart’s opinions regarding faith and religion.

Opinions of Peart’s lyrics have always been divided. While fans have lauded them as thoughtful and intelligent, some critics have called them over-wrought and bombastic. For example, in 2007, he was voted #2 on Blender magazine’s list of “worst lyricists in rock”.

Political views

Peart has never publicly identified with any political party or organization in Canada or the United States. Even so, his political and philosophical views have often been analyzed through his work with Rush and through other sources. Peart is often categorized as an Objectivist and an admirer of Ayn Rand. Most of this is based on his work with Rush in the 1970s, particularly the song “Anthem” and the album 2112, the latter specifically credited to “the genius of Ayn Rand.” However, in a 1994 interview, while contending the “individual is paramount in matters of justice and liberty,” Peart specifically distanced himself from a strictly Objectivist line, stating he was “no one’s disciple.”

Although Peart is sometimes regarded as a “conservative” and “Republican” rock star, he, in 2005, described himself as a “left-leaning libertarian,” and is often cited as a libertarian celebrity. He also speaks of Fox News Channel being biased towards conservatives and rebuts British accusations that he and Rush are a “right wing” rock band in his book Roadshow: Landscape with Drums: a Concert Tour by Motorcycle. In 2008 Peart described himself as a “quasi-libertarian” and stated that motorcycle helmet laws, which are often opposed by libertarians, “are not an issue at all to me.”

Books

Peart is the author of four non-fiction books, the latest released in September 2006. His growth as an author predates the published work by several years (not including his work as Rush’s primary lyricist), through private letters and short travelogues sent out to a small circle of friends and family. Peart’s first book, titled The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa, was written in 1996 about a month-long bicycling tour through Cameroon in November 1988. The book details Peart’s travels through towns and villages with four fellow riders. The original had a limited print run, but after the critical and commercial success of Peart’s second book, Masked Rider was re-issued and remains in print as of 2006.

After losing his wife and only [at the time] daughter, Peart penned Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road. Peart and the rest of the band were always able to keep his private life at a distance from his public image in Rush. However, Ghost Rider is a first-person narrative of Peart on the road, on a BMW R1100GS motorcycle, in an effort to put his life back together as he embarked on an extensive journey across North America.

Deciding to take a road trip, this time by car, Peart reflects on his life, his career, his family and music. This is covered in Peart’s third book Traveling Music: The Soundtrack Of My Life And Times. It follows Peart still carrying emotional scars, but building a new life. As with his previous two books, it is a first person narrative.

Thirty years after Peart joined Rush, the band found itself on its 30th anniversary tour. Released in September 2006, Roadshow: Landscape With Drums, A Concert Tour By Motorcycle details the tour both from behind Neil’s drumkit and on his BMW R1150GS and R1200GS motorcycles.

DVDs

Apart from Rush’s video releases as a band, Peart has released two instructional DVDs

A Work in Progress. Miami, Florida: Warner Bros. Publications. 2002. ISBN 0757990290 Originally released on VHS in 1996 and re-released on DVD in 2002.

Anatomy of A Drum Solo S.l.: Hudson Music: Distributed by Hal Leonard. 2005. ISBN 1423407008

Awards and honours

Rush portal

Peart has received the following awards in the Modern Drummer magazine reader’s poll:

Hall of Fame: 1983

Best Rock Drummer*: 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 2006, 2008

Best Multi-Percussionist*: 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986

Best Percussion Instrumentalist: 1982

Most Promising New Drummer: 1980

Best All Around: 1986

1986 Honor Roll: Rock Drummer, Multi-Percussion

(* – As a member of the Honor Roll in these categories, he is no longer eligible for votes in the above categories.)

Best Instructional Video: 2006, for Anatomy of A Drum Solo

Best Drum Recording of the 1980s, 2007, for “YYZ” from Exit…Stage Left

Best Recorded Performance:

1980: Permanent Waves

1981: Moving Pictures

1982: Exit…Stage Left

1983: Signals

1985: Grace Under Pressure

1986: Power Windows

1988: Hold Your Fire

1989: A Show of Hands

1990: Presto

1992: Roll the Bones

1993: Counterparts

1997: Test for Echo

1999: Different Stages

2002: Vapor Trails

2004: R30

2007: Snakes & Arrows

Peart has received the following awards from DRUM! magazine for 2007:

Drummer of the Year

Best Progressive Rock Drummer

Best Live Performer

Best DVD (Anatomy Of A Drum Solo)

Best Drumming Album (Snakes & Arrows)

Peart received the following awards from DRUM! magazine for 2008:

Drummer of the Year

Best Progressive Rock Drummer (Runner-Up)

Best Mainstream Pop Drummer (Runner-Up)

Best Live Drumming Performer

Peart received the following awards from DRUM! magazine for 2009:

Drummer Of The Year

Best Progressive Rock Drummer

Along with his bandmates Lee and Lifeson, Peart was made an Officer of the Order of Canada on May 9, 1996. The trio was the first rock band to be so honoured, as a group.

Canadian Songwriter Hall of Fame along with bandmates Lifeson and Lee

References

^ Anatomy of a Drum Solo DVD, Neil Peart (2005) accompanying booklet. (Republished in Modern Drummer Magazine, April 2006)

^ a b c d e f g Neil Peart Biography Accessed January 18, 2008

^ a b c Olson, Andrew C.”Neil Peart Modern Drummer Awards” – andrewolson.com – Updated 10/1/06 – Accessed July 18, 2007

^ a b c d e f Peart, Neil. with Brian Collins editor “A Port boy’s story” parts 1 & 2 – St. Catharines Standard – (c/o oocities.com) – June 24/25, 1994 – Accessed August 9, 2007

^ Lakeside Park Rush Song Facts Accessed February 15, 2008

^ Neil Peart in London Don Howe Accessed February 19, 2008

^ The National Midnight Star White-Barn.com Accessed February 19, 2008

^ Allmusic guide Review for 2112 Allmusic guide Accessed February 10

^ History of Rush History of Rush Accessed February 2006

^ “Neil Peart Speaks About New Rush Release”. Chart. 2005-11-16. http://www.chartattack.com/news/39903/neil-peart-speaks-about-new-rush-release. Retrieved 2009-08-09. 

^ Neil Peart’s Lyrics Rob Pagano’s website – Neil Peart Mini-Biography Accessed February 22, 2008

^ a b Individual awards list Accessed July 16, 2007

^ Caress of Steel Review Greg Prato, Allmusic Guide Accessed September 20, 2007

^ Allmusic guide Review for 2112 Allmusic guide Accessed February 10, 2008

^ Geddy Lee Announces Neil Peart Rush Frequently Asked Questions Accessed February 19, 2008

^ Current Biography Magazine Power Windows Website Accessed February 19, 2008

^ Neil Peart’s Official Website Neil Peart News Accessed November 6, 2008

^ a b c Peart, Neil (2002). Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road. ECW Press. ISBN 1550225464. 

^ MacNaughtan, Andrew. Geddy Lee. and Alex Lifeson. “The Boys in Brazil”, Rush in Rio DVD Bonus Material. New York, New York: Atlantic Recording Corporation/Anthem/Msi Music Corp October 2003. ISBN 6311465272

^ Daniel Catullo Rush. Rush in Rio. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Zo Vision. 2003. OCLC 53877410

^ Jordan, Lawrence. Daniel E Catullo. Rush Rush in Rio. London: Sanctuary Visual Entertainment. 2003. OCLC 84678389

^ Peart, Neil Under the Marine Layer, News, Weather and Sports, June 2009, Accessed July 1, 2009

^ Scaruffi, Piero. “Greatest rock drummers of all times” – scaruffi.com – Accessed July 18, 2007

^ a b Neil Peart page – DrummerWorld – Accessed July 18, 2007

^ “Best drummers in rock” – tribe.net – Thursday, January 12, 2006 – Accessed July 18, 2007

^ “Best Rock Drummers” – the-top-tens.com – Accessed July 18, 2007

^ Peart, Neil. Matthew Wachsman. Paul Siegel. Rob Wallis. Anatomy of a Drum Solo. Hudson Music. Distributed by Hal Leonard. 2005. ISBN 1423407008

^ Peart, Neil. “Neil Peart Speaks With Zildjian” – Zildjian.com – (c/o 2112.net) – January 2003

^ Dome, Malcolm. “Interview with Neil Peart” – Metal Hammer – (c/o 2112.net) – April 25th 1988

^ Peart, Neil. Rush – Counterparts – Rush Backstage Club Newsletter – (c/o 2112.net) – January 1994

^ a b c d e Rush Archives Neil Peart’s Equipment Accessed January 18, 2008

^ Neil Peart Signature Series Cymbals Paragon Accessed February 10, 2008

^ Peart, Neil. “”The Count of Words”" – The N.E.P. News – neilpeart.net – March 20, 2007 – Accessed August 9, 2007

^ Modern Drummer Magazine April 2006 Article “Soloing in the Shadow of Giants”. Modern Drummer Publishing Inc. NJ, USA.

^ Peart, Neil. “Soloing in the Shadow of Giants” – Modern Drummer Magazine – (c/o NeilPeart.net) – April 2006

^ “Pieces of Eight” – Modern Drummer Magazine – (c/o 2112.net) – May 1987 – Accessed July 18, 2007

^ Neil Peart; The Waltz – drummerworld.com – (QuickTime video) – Accessed July 18, 2007

^ “Neil Peart > Credits” – All Media Guide – Accessed July 18, 2007

^ Neil Peart Interview Rush: Off The Record with Mary Turner Accessed February 21, 2008

^ a b Interview with Neil Peart Metal Hammer April 25th 1988 Accessed February 21, 2008

^ Rand, Rush, and Rock Neil Peart Quotes Accessed February 16, 2008

^ Power Windows Website Neil Peart Interview Accessed February 2, 2008

^ Power Windows “Grace Under Pressure”Power Windows Website Accessed February 16, 2008

^ Matt Scannell on Neil Peart Drumhead Accessed February 19, 2008

^ Cohen, Jonathan (2006-09-11). “Rush wrestling with faith on new album”. Billboard Magazine. http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003120134. Retrieved 2007-03-10. 

^ “Sting tops list of worst lyricists”. CBC News. October 9, 2007. http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2007/10/09/blender-list-worstlyric.html. Retrieved 2007-10-09. 

^ Rand, Rush and Rock

^ Power windows…Counterparts

^ Republican Rock Stars

^ The Spirit of Rand

^ Neil Peart – Libertarian

^ 5 Biggest Libertarian Musicians

^ a b Peart, Neil (October 25, 2006). Roadshow: Landscape With Drums: A Concert Tour by Motorcycle. Rounder Records. ISBN 1579401422. 

^ NEP News

^ Peart, Neil. The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa. ECW Press. ISBN 1550226673. 

^ Peart, Neil (September 28, 2004). Traveling Music: The Soundtrack to My Life and Times. ECW Press. ISBN 1550226649. 

^ Awards List Rush Awards list Accessed August 2, 2007

^ DRUM! Magazine Awards Blabbermouth.net Accessed January 1, 2008

^ DRUM! Magazine Awards Big Drum Thump Accessed July 2, 2008

^ DRUM! Magazine Awards Drummies Accessed July 13, 2009

^ “RUSH highlights”, MapleMusic – Accessed May 23, 2007

^ “Rush to be among inductees to songwriters hall of fame”. CTV. January 19, 2010. http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100119/rush_100119/20100119/?hub=TorontoNewHome. Retrieved January 20, 2010. 

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Neil Peart

The Official Neil Peart website

Official Rush Web site

Power Windows tour drumkit assembly

v  d  e

Rush

Geddy Lee  Alex Lifeson  Neil Peart

John Rutsey  Jeff Jones

Studio albums

Rush  Fly by Night  Caress of Steel  2112  A Farewell to Kings  Hemispheres  Permanent Waves  Moving Pictures  Signals  Grace Under Pressure  Power Windows  Hold Your Fire  Presto  Roll the Bones  Counterparts  Test for Echo  Vapor Trails  Feedback  Snakes & Arrows

Live albums

All the World’s a Stage  Exit…Stage Left  Grace Under Pressure Tour  A Show of Hands  Different Stages  Rush in Rio  R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour   Snakes & Arrows Live

Live videos

Exit…Stage Left  Grace Under Pressure Tour  A Show of Hands  Rush in Rio  R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour  Rush Replay X 3  Snakes & Arrows Live

Album compilations

Rush Through Time  Archives  Chronicles  Retrospective I  Retrospective II  The Spirit of Radio: Greatest Hits 1974-1987  Gold  Retrospective 3   Working Men

Video compilations

Through the Camera Eye  Chronicles

Tours

Roll the Bones Tour   Counterparts Tour   Test for Echo Tour   Vapor Trails Tour   R30: 30th Anniversary Tour   Snakes & Arrows Tour

Related articles

Discography  Awards  History  Instrumentals  Equipment  Victor  My Favorite Headache  A Work in Progress  Anatomy of a Drum Solo  Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road  “Fear” series  Cygnus X-1 duology  Hugh Syme  The Fifth Order of Angels

The Rush portal

Persondata

NAME

Peart, Neil

ALTERNATIVE NAMES

Peart, Neil Ellwood

SHORT DESCRIPTION

Canadian drummer , lyricist, and author

DATE OF BIRTH

September 12, 1952

PLACE OF BIRTH

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

DATE OF DEATH

PLACE OF DEATH

Categories: 1952 births | Canadian rock drummers | Canadian songwriters | Living people | Officers of the Order of Canada | People from Los Angeles, California | People from St. Catharines | Progressive rock musicians | Rush (band) members | Musicians from Toronto | Canadian memoirists | Canadian libertarians | Left-libertarians | Long-distance riding

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