How BART found its voice by letting riders tell the story.
When Alicia Trost, chief communications officer at the Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, spotted a quirky trend called “transit speedrunning” she knew she had a unique opportunity on her hands.
Speedrunning is a sport where people race to ride an entire rail system in the fastest possible time. When Trost picked up on it, she decided BART should not only embrace it, but make it an official BART program.
“I don’t want us to sound like any other government agency,” Trost said. “And I definitely don’t want to sound like a normal transit agency. I want to be culture-driven and engagement-driven. I want people to talk about BART in a whole new way rather than just, ‘I take BART to get to work.’”
It’s a big mission for a system once known mostly as a commuter line for office workers, she said. But Trost, who joined BART 13 years ago after stints in the California State Senate and KTVU television, has a knack for spotting cultural trends and flipping them into community-centered storytelling.
Speedrunning, though, didn’t start with her. It started with superfans.
Highlighting the story
“A decade ago, I saw people speedrunning the London Tube,” Trost said. “Then one day, this kid named Miles, he goes by ‘Miles in Transit,’ came all the way from Boston to speedrun BART during the height of the pandemic. I thought, this is so awesome. We literally dropped what we were doing, found him in the system, and even brought him to meet the general manager.”
That encounter lit the fuse. Trost began tracking other young riders who were doing the same thing, often middle or high school students sharing their attempts on Twitter or Discord. Instead of treating them as nuisances, she saw them as ambassadors.
“I would DM them, bring them to headquarters, spend the afternoon with them,” she said. “And I’d ask, what did you see out there? What advice do you have for us? How can we serve you better?”
It was, in its own way, crowdsourced market research wrapped in Gen Z enthusiasm, she said.
Through their own experiences and in their own words, the riders were highlighting why transit systems are safe, efficient and fun. This was a message Trost wanted to amplify, even creating an official Discord server for BART speedrunning to engage with riders and see when groups were making plans.
“When do you ever see a chief communications officer running a Discord? It’s so neat to follow and interact,” she said.
Generating media attention
The turning point came when UC Berkeley students decided to make their speedrun Guinness World Record–official, completing their race in 5 hours 47 minutes and 42 seconds. Trost leaned in hard. BART posted about the attempt across social channels, honored the students at a board meeting and scored wall-to-wall local media coverage when they set the record, she said.
“That was the first little bit of real earned media,” she said. “And I just kept at it.”
The students had such a great experience competing that after they set the record, they ordered an additional piece of Guinness World Record hardware for the BART offices.
After dozens of inquiries about what speedrunning actually is, Trost launched and hosted an episode on BART’s official “Between the Lines” podcast where she interviewed record-holders, explaining the strategy of speed running in an in-depth conversation.
Then came more records, more kids, and eventually, the San Francisco Chronicle’s pop culture columnist attempting his own run for an article. By the time the New York Times for Kids featured a 9-year-old who asked to speedrun BART for Christmas, the campaign had gone national.
“Think about that narrative,” Trost said. “You’re hearing all this doom and gloom about safety on transit, and then you see kids, literally kids, spending six hours a day riding BART for fun. Nothing scary happens. That’s how I change the narrative.”
Ben, BART’s youngest speedrunner with Alicia Trost.
Not everyone would have embraced it, she said. Many agencies shy away, worried about liability or loitering policies that technically prohibit long stints on trains. But BART carried a different attitude: bend the rules to tell the story.
“One group wanted 100 people to speed run at once,” she said. “We were like, how are you going to get 100 people through the Oakland Airport connector’s tiny fare gates? So we just had the station agent swing the door open for them. Some might call it cheating. I call it making it happen.”
Gamifying speed running
The program has since grown into something bigger, she said. It’s a community hub where records are tracked on BART’s website, complete with categories like “youngest runner,” “largest group” and “fastest time with multimodal connections.”
Kids send Trost their times along with anecdotes about what went wrong or how they passed the hours, which are then featured in write ups.
“People literally want to be on our website,” she said. “They email me with rebuttals, like lawyers, negotiating whether a bike counts as transit. And I love that. It’s become a community we’ve co-designed together.”
The KPIs back it up, Trost said, amplifying BART’s reach through earned media, viral YouTube videos with hundreds of thousands of views, LinkedIn stories in the form of posts and short form videos to a major spike in student journalism requests.
Speedrunners Enzo and Adam stretch during their run.
Most importantly, Trost said, youth ridership is ticking upward. In August, BART saw a 10% YoY increase in riders overall. Parents even reach out to BART to ask how they can support their kids who want to try.
“That’s when I know it’s working,” Trost said. “If parents are asking us how to speedrun, we’ve changed the perception of who BART is for.”
And Trost isn’t done. She’s speaking this week with Strava about gamifying the program further by providing riders with digital badges. She wants to create challenge coins for participants. She’s even pitched giving job applicants “extra credit” if they can prove they’re BART superusers, which is its own valuable KPI, she said.
“It’s about recruiting the next generation too,” she said. “These kids know the system better than some of our employees. I want them working for us one day.”
Embracing authenticity
For Trost, it all goes back to her golden rule of comms or “showing personality, not bureaucracy.”
“Most government agencies want polished influencers,” she said. “I want everyday kids, kids on the spectrum, kids who get overlooked, to be the stars. That’s what people want to see. Real people, quirks and all.”
While BART does work with creators, they also strive to showcase real riders of all ages, genders and differences. All photos and videos shared across BART’s website and on social channels are the actual people participating in speedrunning, she said.
The strategy has been so effective that other transit agencies are calling BART to ask how they pulled it off.
“I tell them, your riders are already speedrunning,” she said. “You just don’t know it. Go find them. Tell their stories. Make it official.”
Courtney Blackann is a communications reporter. Connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at courtneyb@ragan.com.
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