A BART ticket of mine recently did me the favor of notifying me that "BART [is the] no. 1 Transit System in America". This notice was accompanied by a picture of a woman thrusting her fist into the air and screaming, presumably in joy. An (extremely brief) expedition into internet research turned up corroboration of the triumphalist chest-beating found on the back of my ticket. Since customer satisfaction apparently stands somewhere around 90%, I can't say that I am in much of a position to argue. Still, there is something fairly mind-boggling about a form of public transit that has carpeted floors and has cloth-covered seats. Considering the respective stain- and smell-retention abilities of fabric and, say, plastic, I sort of have to wonder what exactly the BART planners were thinking. There were some experimental plasticky-blue-floored cars floating around this summer, but they seem to largely have disappeared. If anything, the blue plastic smelled odder than the carpet. Whether it's because I have a sentimental attachment to moderately crappy things associated with undergrad or because I am a tight-fisted, skinflinty cheapskate, I have to say I preferred the CTA.