Bart - by Michael C Healy (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

In the first-ever history book about BART, longtime agency spokesman Michael C. Healy gives an insider's account of the rapid transit system's inception, hard-won approval, construction, and operations, "warts and all."

Written with a master storyteller's homey wit and sharp attention to detail, BART recreates the politically fraught venture to bring a new kind of public transit to the West Coast. What emerges is a sense of the individuals who made (and make) BART happen. From tales of staying up until 3:00 a.m. with Bill Stokes and Jack Everson to hear the election results for the rapid transit vote or weathering scandals, strikes, and growing pains, this look behind the scenes of an iconic, seemingly monolithic structure reveals people at their most human-and determined to change the status quo.

Review Quotes

"Indispensable." -Michael Rosen, San Francisco Chronicle

"The Metro. The T. The Tube. The world's most famous subway systems are known by simple monikers, and San Francisco's BART belongs in that class. Michael C. Healy delivers a tour-de-force telling of its roots, hard-fought approval, and challenging construction that will delight fans of American urban history."--Doug Most, author of The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America's First Subway

"From Emperor Norton's 1872 dream of a transbay tunnel to the BART tube opening one hundred years later, Healy explores the nuanced history of the Bay Area's subway system through the convergent lenses of social, cultural, engineering, and political forces. In this exquisitely researched work, Healy not only brings the dramatic stories of BART's development to light, but shares the fragile web of energies, power, funding, and sheer will that created this monumental system of people-moving." --Anthea M. Hartig, executive director of the California Historical Society

About the Author

Nicknamed "Mr. BART" by his colleagues, Michael C. Healy was responsible for BART's media affairs and marketing activities from 1971--about ten months before trains started running--until his retirement in 2004. He wrote for radio and film and was the editor of the Sausalito News before taking a public relations job at the nascent transit agency. He is an alumnus of the University of Southern California.