BART, standing for Bay Area Rapid Transit, is celebrating 50 years since it was founded, and 35 years since it carried its first passenger on September 11, 1972. The idea of an electric people mover for the Bay Area to help relieve growing traffic congestion on the Bay Bridge was first conceived in 1946, a time when most people would choose cars over public transit and before the concept of global warming was coined.

The BART system is now a tremendous system, including a subway that runs underneath Market Street in San Francisco, and the San Francisco Transbay Tube, an underwater tube which is 3.6 miles long and has a maximum depth of 135 feet below the surface, making it the longest and one of the deepest vehicular tubes in the world. It is a now a major transit system for the Bay Area, with hundreds of thousands of daily riders, and also featuring connections to SFO and OAK airports, UC Berkeley, downtown San Francisco, Oakland Coliseum, and many other parts of the Bay Area.

When the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area, a portion of the Bay Bridge collapsed on itself, causing it to be closed down for a long period of time. However, the BART Transbay Tube suffered no damage, and within hours BART was running at full speed, and really became an essential connection between the San Francisco Peninsula and the East Bay. Similarly, when the MacArthur Maze, one of the most heavily used freeway junctions in the country, burned in April 2007, BART was there to relieve the excess traffic.

So congratulations to BART for 35 years of service. If you’re in the Bay Area and you’ve never had a chance to ride BART, it’s a great experience and you oughta check it out. Also, check out BART’s 35th Anniversary Video, where they recap the last 35 years and talk about some of their ongoing projects.

Tags: anniversary, BART, Bay Area, earthquake, trains, transit, Video