The physical keys to BART transit

A Friend of a Friend story.

As the City of Oakland, California, goes ahead with a surveillance center of creepy scope, we decided to provide a page to a friend's story of the keys of BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system.

The keys to BART consisted of two huge key rings with a few smaller keyrings strung up on the large rings. In addition, the keyrings came with documentation. The full electrical wiring plans in a red plastic binder and a train driver manual in excellent condition sat there with the keys.

How does an average citizen obtain keys to stations, trains, electrical switches of a major United States transit system?

What does the citizen do with the find?

How  does the BART system react?

The friend lived near a freeway on-ramp and had the pleasure to hear, and sometimes see, drivers take the turn too fast, so fast that they lost cargo, so fast that they ran into the freeway sign or the fence of the home across the street.

Cleanup was, in theory, the job of the city. But it was badly managed, and calling them might get you a bill for the cleanup of other people's trash. So, the friend cleaned up the mostly small messes.

One summer day, the haul was bigger than than usual, two XL black trash bags graced the sidewalk. Papers had spilled out of one when it split wide open on impact.

The red BART manual caught our friend's eye and he started to go through the trash to sort any recyclables from plain trash. When the work was done, the sidewalk and the road were clean, and our friend was in possession of the two huge keyrings and the BART manuals.

The keys were valid, actual keys, not some historical artifact. They would get you where ever you wanted on BART. 

"Take them to a TV station", suggested the friend's partner. "They need some embarrassment."

Instead, our friend took his treasure and walked the six or eight blocks to the nearest BART station, where he handed the haul to the station attendant.

"Where did you get these?" a surprised station attendant asked.

"From two trash bags next to the freeway on-ramp", our friend replied as he gave the keys and the manuals to the attendant. Then he turned and left.

The attendant did not say thank you.

Not long afterwards, a young black man named Oscar Grant was shot and killed by a BART police officer.

"If there is ever a next time, I'll take the stuff to a TV station", our friend said.

[Correction by TheEditor: the binder colors were switched in the initial post. The driver manual was blue, the electrical schematics were in a red manual.]