BART Operator Reflects On 24 Years Of Transporting Passengers

(KPIX 5) -- They are the men and women who get us all from here to there every single day in the Bay Area, even if you don't know their name or even see their faces in some cases. They are the drivers of public transportation, and this is Transit Driver Appreciation Day.

"I was gonna say, maybe after the first five years or so the nervousness of the job disappears, and it becomes more enjoyable after that," explained BART train operator J.D. Whitelow. "You don't think about it till the end of the day when you're like 'wow, I moved x amount of people today.'"

For 24 years now, Whitelow has been hauling untold numbers of people around the Bay Area. Now that he's accustomed to the enormous responsibility of that job, he says he very much enjoys doing it.

"Like I say, 24 years," he smiled. "It's been joyous." He is, of course, on the front lines of an agency that is at times frustrating for passengers, while also being indispensable for the region it serves. He says he doesn't mind that part it. "What's great about this job you have some interaction with the passengers, and then you don't, so you get a little bit of both worlds."

Now that challenge is, of course, a little bit different for bus drivers in a system like San Francisco's Muni. Those drivers are now getting de-escalation training in the event of combative passengers. Driving public transportation can frequently be a very thankless job, but Whitelow says his good passengers, by and large, outweigh the bad.

Every now and then, he even gets a few words of gratitude. "Yeah, specially from some of the younger passengers," said Whitelow. "They get off, and they say 'thank you sir.' It's like 'Oh, wow,' because you can go through your whole day and no one says anything to you, then all of a sudden that one person makes your day. It's great."