BART officials are holding out hope that repairs to a San Francisco trackway can be completed by 5 p.m. today, but there could be delays of up to an hour during this evening’s commute.
BART is running only the San Francisco International Airport line past the Montgomery station in San Francisco until repairs are completed, BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said.
The problem was discovered at about 9:20 a.m. on the eastbound trackway between the Civic Center and 16th Street Mission BART stations, Trost said.
A train operator reported a possibly broken trackway there. Repair crews later confirmed there was a 10-inch gap in the track, Trost said.
“It was a bumpy ride,” she said.
Repairs were underway on the tracks by noon, but were expected to last several hours and might not be completed until 4 or 5 p.m., Trost said.
If the trackway is not reopened by this evening’s commute, there could be delays of up to an hour and station agents might need to limit the number of people entering the station, Trost said.
Complicating matters is that the San Francisco Giants are playing a day game against the San Diego Padres today, so BART is seeing increased ridership.
“It’s very unfortunate we are having delays and we are very sorry, especially with the Giants game, but this is a safety issue,” Trost said. “Every line is affected, there’s just not enough redundancy in the system, it wasn’t built to accommodate this.”
There were 433,000 BART trips systemwide Tuesday.
BART officials are recommending passengers seek alternate methods of transportation. San Francisco Municipal Railway and Alameda-Contra Costa Transit are honoring BART tickets today.
Trains are single-tracking through all downtown San Francisco stations and only airport-bound trains traveling from the East Bay to the city are running past Montgomery, Trost said.
Trains that normally run from Fremont to Daly City are stopping at the MacArthur station in Oakland, trains from Dublin to Daly City are turning around at Montgomery, and no trains are running directly from Richmond to San Francisco, Trost said.
Passengers on any of those trains will have to get off at those stations and continue on an airport-bound train, according to Trost.
Sara Gaiser and Scott Morris, Bay City News
