CA: Blessed by the 'bus gods': Two riders just completed the ultimate Bay Area transit challenge

One of Bay Area transit's most challenging records was broken late last week, when a pair of bus/ferry/rail enthusiasts rode the region's 24 Clipper-eligible transit agencies in less than 24 hours.

The feat took Jay Sathe and Miles Taylor on an all-night odyssey across hundreds of miles through nine counties — beginning at the Ferry Building in San Francisco on Thursday afternoon, riding through the night and ending dramatically in Vacaville, where the pair hopped on a City Coach bus right at the 24-hour mark.

The last transit nerds to try this in a high-profile arena were the Chronicle's Heather Knight, Jessica Christian ... and me. We managed just 17 agencies, before short-changing history and hopping Caltrain to a Giants game for beers.

While others have completed BART speedruns and similar Muni challenges, the completed Total Transit run is believe to be the first of its kind.

Sathe, an Oakland resident and graphic designer at BART, said the main motivation was fun. The pair will release a video on Miles in Transit, the popular YouTube channel of Boston-based Taylor. (Tagline: "I push transit to its limits.") But they also wanted to test things like accuracy of timetables and wayfinding, and to see how transit can work better. Think of the stunt as the public transit version of a secret shopper who drops into an Applebys to time how long it takes for a Dollarita to hit the table.

Sathe gives the region a passing grade.

"We got a ton of comments like, 'Wow, be sure to enjoy the Bay's fractured, fragmented transportation network,'" Sathe said. "And over the 24 hours, with a couple exceptions, it was not that fractured or fragmented."

The journey brought them on transit juggernauts such as BART and Muni but also lesser-known services including WestCat ( Contra Costa County), Tri-Valley Wheels (servicing Pleasanton and Livermore) and the Dumbarton Express. The pair spent as long as 2 1/2 hours on one SamTrans bus from San Francisco to Palo Alto, and took a few agencies for just one stop.

When Knight, Christian and I tried to ride 27 agencies in one day — including three that don't take Clipper — we questioned the need for so many different administrations, and their lack of coordination and communication between each other.

Sathe and Taylor also faced trials. They lost their way on the notorious 500-yard winding path between the Golden Gate Ferry's Larkspur terminal and the Larkspur SMART train station. It rained for much of their journey. And while Taylor was able to take two short naps, Sathe didn't sleep.

"He's been battle tested," Sathe said of his partner. "He's done Greyhound across the country a couple of times."

The duo also found unexpected joys big and small, including particularly roomy buses on SolTrans ( Sonoma County) and Golden Gate Transit through Marin and Sonoma counties.

"I'll always love a big coach bus," Sathe said. "I know they're not great for actual transit — it's a very commuter sort of thing — but when we got on one of the huge coach buses, they always had nice outlets, nice wi-fi. And they were heated, which was important when it was rainy."

And the whole endeavor, expected to cost $116, was $40 to $50 cheaper because of unexpected transfer discounts and a couple agencies with broken fare boxes that didn't require payment.

Some of the journey was out of their hands. A canceled bus or late train could have doomed the project on the first night. But the transfers were mostly smooth until the last two, from Fairfield and Suisun Transit to City Coach.

Sathe and Taylor pulled into the Vacaville Transportation Center with just a few minutes to spare, hoping fate would present them with idling City Coach buses to complete their journey. They didn't see one on approach, but turned a corner and found a single bus.

"Mood: it's in the hands of the bus gods now," Sathe wrote on Bluesky, on the final ride.

They tapped their Clipper cards at 4:28 p.m., with just seconds to spare.

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