After years of putting up with stained seats, it's no surprise that BART riders overwhelmingly approve of new vinyl seats.
A new BART survey found that of 1,200 riders surveyed, 3/4 of the them preferred new vinyl seats installed in some trains in April over the old cloth seats.
Of those who approved of the new seats, 93 percent rated the seats as "excellent" or "Very Good." Ninety percent of those said they would favor BART installing more vinyl covers on seats.
So far BART has installed vinyl seats on 50 cars and it plans to outfit 100 train cars with the seats by the end of July.
By early next, 200 cars should have the new vinyl covers.
The cost of installing vinyl seats in 200 cars is about $1.9 million but the new seats will help BART reduce the $600,000 yearly dry cleaning costs required by the fabric seats and they last 7 to 10 years instead of three for fabric seats.
