Tri-Valley teen’s message to parents: Get your kids on transit!

Enzo Wu, 15, is pictured on a BART train.  

Listen to Enzo Wu, Ameen DaCosta, and YouTuber Adam discuss the art of speedrunning on the BART podcast. 

Enzo Wu is a BART speedrun world recordholder. He’s also a San Ramon teenager working to “spread the gospel of transit.” 

“A lot of people I know haven’t actually gone out and tried transit, and they form their opinions about it from family or social media,” Wu said recently. His longstanding question: How can you know you don’t want to ride transit if you’ve never actually ridden it?  

Wu believes public transportation is an important tool for people his age. You don’t have to have a license, and you don’t have to beg your parents to drop you off and pick you up. You can just go when you want to, where you want to (with your parents’ permission, of course).  

Wu has been working to get his friends to take transit by inviting them to take BART to an unexplored location and offering to pay their fare and even buy them dinner. That's how much the transit cause matters to him. 

“People my age don’t go out and do stuff in public enough,” he said. “They’re not getting out there and interacting with new people offline, and if they’re bored on a weekend, they’ll sit around all day and play videogames." 

There’s nothing wrong with videogames – Wu's a big gamer himself – but there’s more to life than screens, he said. Transit is his foolproof balm for boredom. It’s also provided him with plentiful opportunities to practice independence and social skills.  

“Going out in public, riding the train, these are activities that build social confidence, which so many kids lack these days,” said Wu (who’s darn mature for his 15 years, if you hadn’t noticed). “Knowing how to take a train or a bus or a ferry is a big step in growing up.” 

Some of his friends have never done anything alone, let alone take the train from the Tri-Valley to San Francisco, he added. 

“We’ll go to a restaurant, and they’ll get stressed because they don’t know how to pay the bill,” he said. “It’s kind of shocking. They lack social skills. But I think transit can bridge that gap. Some of my friends won’t necessarily take transit everywhere like I do, but just getting the idea in their heads is a big step.” 

The hurdle isn’t always social; sometimes, it’s parental.  

“Some of my friends are game to go into San Francisco and check out a new spot I found,” Wu said. “But then their parents say no.”  

“I just find that so sad,” he continued. “Many parents haven’t even tried transit themselves! They see a headline and form an instant opinion. Can you imagine if people did that with airplane travel? If you actually have a decent understanding of traveling by transit, you wouldn’t prevent your kid from riding it, especially during the day and with a group.”

Only two years ago, Wu himself had almost no experience on public transportation. It was his mom who inadvertently gave him the transit bug when she signed him up for 511 Contra Costa’s Pass2Class, a program that gives middle and high school students free bus rides to school for up to two months.  

When Wu’s mom first gave him the card with the expectation that he’d at least try taking the bus home from school, he replied: “You want me to take the bus??? Ewwwwww.”  

“Enzo, just try it,” she said. “If it’s bad, we’ll find you a carpool.” You know what happened next.  

Now, Wu’s getting his parents on the transit train. He regularly shares “good transit news” along with his long list of positive BART and bus experiences. It’s boosted his parent’s confidence in his ability to be out in the world alone, he said. Now they don’t think twice about letting him head out on his own.  

Wu has many “transit conversion” success stories to share. Once he gets a friend onboard – that first ride experience is key – it’s not uncommon for the transit ingenue to become transit oriented. He believes he’s “converted” at least a dozen friends directly and dozens more indirectly, thanks to people who watch his speedrun videos and livestreams.  

If you’re unacquainted with the term, a speedrun is the total time it takes to travel through all BART stations (or another form of transportation). You can learn more about BART speedrun records here and watch the invigorating video of Wu and YouTuber Adam's new BART speedrun world record here. This past October, the duo speedran the BART system with a time of 5 hours, 9 minutes, and 35 seconds.  

“Even just people posting the articles about my speedruns in their Discord chats – people go, ‘Woah, that’s cool Enzo does that. Maybe I should check BART out,’” he said. Now, thanks to the success of his videos, it’s not uncommon for friends to ask to tag along on upcoming runs.  

Speedrunning is something of an unconventional hobby (though a solid extracurricular for college apps, Wu hopes). Other than countering some of the transit-negative narratives on social media, the act of speedrunning demonstrates that “if you plan a route in advance, your transit experience can work out well.” 

“Once you get experience, planning your trip is fun, simple, and stress free,” Wu said.  

And Wu knows it will serve him and his friends as they transition into adulthood.  

“Building transit skills now will come in handy many years down the line when you need to get to college, to work,” he said. “That’s why I ride transit, and that’s why I’m advocating for kids my age to do the same.” 

“If you can’t ride transit without freaking out, you’ll lose out on all these experiences,” he concluded. “Then, you’ll look back and say, ‘Why didn’t I take transit earlier? Enzo gave me a great opportunity, and I said no!’” 

BART offers a 50% fare discount for youth ages five to 18 years old with a Youth Clipper card. Children four years old and younger ride free. Learn more about Youth Clipper cards and other fare discounts here.