The San Francisco portion of BART, including Balboa Park station, opened on November 5, 1973.

In the early 2000s, BART and Muni began planning renovations to improve the accessibility of the station and its connections to the surrounding neighborhoods.

[5] The northern third of the platform, plus a small section at the southern end, is in an open trench; the remainder is under Geneva Avenue and the headhouse structure.

The main entrance, located on the north side of Geneva Avenue, leads to a below-street-level fare control area in a mezzanine over the middle of the BART platform.

Inbound trains pick up passengers at San Jose and Geneva, which has a concrete platform with a wayside lift for accessibility, after proceeding around the yard loop.

[9] The line had several stops within San Francisco, including Elkton, located on the east side of the tracks 300 feet (90 m) south of Ocean Avenue.

[9] However, the railroad was not very useful to local residents: high fares discouraged both passengers and freight, and on-street running in the Mission District made the ride slow.

[19] The merger and the impending end of World War II (which had limited the availability of rubber tires) prompted the conversion of many streetcar routes to bus or trolleybus.

[22][19] Even before the Ocean View Branch was abandoned, several proposals for rapid transit aimed to use the Ocean View Branch route (usually in conjunction with a Mission Street subway) and its Bernal Cut to avoid expensive tunneling through San Francisco's hills.

[31] The San Francisco portion of BART, including Balboa Park station, opened on November 5, 1973.

[34] The walls of the platform area are covered with linear precast concrete forms, with five patterns repeated eightfold to generate "an apparently infinite variety".

[34] Other elements praised by architectural critics included overhead power conduits on the platform level, and the interplay of light and shadow among the geometric forms of the mezzanine.

[38] In 1972, Muni began planning a long-proposed extension of the J Church line along San Jose Avenue (a section of which was built along the former Ocean View Branch through the Bernal Cut) to Balboa Park.

[2]: 70  On August 31, 1991, J and N streetcars began using the extension to access the yards, thus providing revenue J service to Balboa at limited hours.

[4]: 24  A small accessible platform was built east of Green Yard, next to the northbound track on San Jose at Seneca, to allow the planned through-routing.

[39] The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved the Balboa Park Area Plan in May 2009, setting the stage for a number of transit and pedestrian improvements to the station complex.

[40][41] Three projects – the Westside Walkway, the Eastside Connector, and new Muni boarding and alighting platforms – were prioritized and funded.

[4]: 52  The Westside Walkway replaced the northern half of the path with a concrete ramp that leads to a new set of faregates at the north end of the headhouse, thus providing a shorter and fully accessible entrance from Ocean Avenue and the nearby City College of San Francisco (for which the station is the main transit access).

[43] In September 2014, Muni began construction of an accessible 1-car-length high-level platform on the east side of the yard, adjacent to San Jose Avenue, to allow level boarding for all inbound J and K riders.

This work was coordinated with rail replacement in the yard and widening the pedestrian walkway to San Jose Avenue.

The J Church line was rerouted onto San Jose Avenue, while the K Ingleside was cut back to City College Pedestrian Bridge.

[54] The opening of the Muni Metro East facility on the T Third Street line in 2008 reduced storage needs at Geneva Yard.

On December 2, 2010, Muni and the Market Street Railway nonprofit organization opened a 6-track shelter at the yard to house 24 historic streetcars.

[57] Construction of a 131-unit affordable housing development on the Upper Yard plot began in October 2020 and was completed in September 2023.

[58] Thirteen BART stations, including Balboa Park, did not originally have faregates for passengers using the elevator.

[59] Construction began in June 2024 on an offboarding platform for the M Ocean View, located south of Niagara Avenue.

Projects recommended by the report (along with those discussed above) included: The 2011 plan for a rerouting of the M Ocean View through Parkmerced assumed that the M would continue to terminate at Balboa Park.

Initial plans in 2014 for a 19th Avenue subway had the M divide into two branches, one terminating at Parkmerced and the other at Balboa Park.

[72] The city gave the Friends of the Geneva Car Barn control of the building in 2014, but reclaimed it in 2015 when the group had difficulties raising funds.

[76] The next month, the city announced that it would receive $3.5 million in state funds for the project — enough to complete renovations of the powerhouse.