Powell St — Local services in San Francisco

The Powell station is very convenient, especially for traveler, it can easy to connect to tour spots. but unfortunately, there are some homeless guys to cheat travelers. according my bad experience, I saw two times, one is my friend, another is me. I think homeless guy can easy to identify who traveler is. When we would like to buy BART ticket to airport, they come out and two really cases for you reference: case 1(My Friend)：If you only pay 4USD/person, you can get the ticket. you don't need to pay money to me immediately, you can double check it and pay to me after you pass through gate .

case 2(Myself)：my family total 3 persons, homeless told to me, no cheating, don't worry about me. If you buy three ticket around 27USD, you only pay 20USD to me, you can saving 7USD. But I think there is no such thing as a free lunch. I insist this is cheating behavior and reject his suggestion. But my wife give him 10USD and homeless run away veryveryvery quickly.

I told to my friend, you can't get the lowest price ticket, it should be has problem. my friend double check with gate security who told him, they are bad guys. you need to buy ticket by yourself.

May I give a suggestion to Powell station center? please restrain this kind of behavior in the station, I'm very worry about they will snatch wallet or package, even they will hurt some traveler. Please help pay attention to this...

For some reason on each of my trips to the Bay and the City I seem to be centrally located near Market. I think it's because of the hotels. I seem to always use this as the jump off point for my daily excursions eating, sight-seeing or visiting friends. I'm still a noob when purchasing credits and putting money on cards, but the bums in the station are at least helpful and worthy of earning their tip in helping me out. Not the case in cities like NY, Chicago where I know to be a little more cautious.

This place has no trashcans on the platform, but it's pretty clean either way. Subways are the way to go, convenient and out of the way, save the streets for the bikers, trollies and cars.

Although I've never seen a cop in or around the entrance in the dozen experiences I've had here it would be nice to throw a rent a cop into the mix. It's pretty safe overall, but it's a cold cruel world sometimes. Bart cards are way easier to purchase than transit in NY, but I actually think their system is easier to travel...

We travelled to SFO to San Jose via Powell Street's Bart station on 09/03/2022 around 3 PM. I want to share my experience, since we were just new tourists around we tried to ask for information to the staff sitting there near the turnstiles. An aggressive homeless person starts to asks us for money (almost like threatening us) the staff there (lady) immediately intervened on the loudspeaker and asked the homeless to leave us alone and she was about to call the police. I was really surprised to see her spring into action.

Sincerely appreciate the lady, she apologized to us and helped us to buy tickets. Staff should be trained like her. I am very sorry to have not asked her name mostly because we were nervous and wanted to get away from that place.

Whoever you are mam, God bless your soul and you are awesome, hope you can recognize us from...