After a delay of over three hours, BART has started morning service as of 7:17 AM.
According to BART spokesperson Jim Allison, a communication problem between the transit agency’s central control computer systems and track switches delayed 19 trains with between 500-1000 passengers shortly after midnight Friday morning.
“Train operators and track crews are instead manually cranking switches into position to route the trains properly. This is more time consuming than our standard automated routing so it’s taking us longer to get passengers to their destinations,” Allison said at 2:17 this morning.
He emphasized that the issues are not wind related.
At 4:11 AM, Allison announced that these continued technical issues meant that BART would not begin its morning service until, BART hoped, 5 AM.
“There is no BART service until further notice,” BART said in a general message to riders sent at 4:14 AM. “We hope to have service restored by 5 AM. Please use other means of transportation.”
At 5:03 AM, BART announced “We hope to have service restored by 6 AM. Please use other means of transportation.” BART reiterated this message at 5:25 AM.
By 7 AM, the prognosis appeared even grimmer. “No BART service this morning due to computer problems” read the announcement sent to riders.
“We’re not going to have service until further notice so we are advising our customers to seek alternate transportation at this time,” Allison said in the announcement.
However, just 12 minutes later, BART announced that they “should be restoring service in the next 15 minutes. We are currently in the process of testing the system.”
Sure enough, at 7:17, they announced that “BART has recovered from an earlier problem. All trains are now picking up passengers. Please expect system wide delays.”
