BART General Manager Bob Powers leads a free, nearly three-hour walking tour of Powell Street, Glen Park, and San Bruno stations on Thursday, Aug 20 — station history, design, and recent upgrades, with guest speakers. Eventbrite registration required; space is limited.

The person who runs BART is going to walk you through three of its stations himself, for free. On Thursday, Aug. 20, General Manager Bob Powers leads a walking tour of Powell Street, Glen Park, and San Bruno — three stops the agency picked because each tells a different chapter of its 50-plus-year history. Plan on nearly three hours door to door, and register on Eventbrite ahead of time: space is capped, and this is the kind of niche, free, one-off that quietly sells out.

The pitch is the part of BART you never get to see standing on a platform. Powers — a licensed engineer who's run the agency since 2019 and does these station listening-and-walking tours regularly — brings guest speakers to talk history, architecture, engineering, and the recent upgrades at each stop. Powell Street, opened in 1973 and designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is the three-level hub under Market feeding four BART lines and six Muni Metro lines. Glen Park is the concrete-and-light "brutalist" landmark tucked into a residential pocket. San Bruno is the workhorse linking a growing business district to SFO.

The honest logistics gap: as of this week, BART hadn't posted the exact start time or which station you meet at — grab those with the registration link off @SFBART or bart.gov before you commit. It's a weekday, so assume mid-day and plan your work schedule accordingly.

If you've got a spare Thursday and a Clipper card, this is a genuinely good use of it — free, small, and led by the one person who can actually answer "why is it built like this?" Register first, ask logistics second.