BART service resumed at 9am on Friday, May 9, after early morning problems prevented regular service

Regular BART service resumed at around 9am this morning, Friday, May 9, following an earlier problem that prevented trains from being safely dispatched for passenger service, which typically takes place at 5am on weekdays. 

The root cause of the disruption was related to network devices having intermittent connectivity. Staff in the Operations Control Center lacked the visibility of the track circuits and the train positions necessary for safe operations. Visibility of this system in the Operations Control Center is required to run service.  

BART issued its first service advisory at 4:30am, alerting the public that BART service was suspended systemwide until further notice.   

BART’s Network Engineering team identified and isolated a redundant sector of the network that was causing intermittent visibility and disconnected it. This allowed service to begin. The East Bay section of the BART system began running passenger trains first, shortly before 9am, and systemwide service began just before 9:30am. 

During the period when there was no BART service, BART’s leadership sent extra staff who usually work at headquarters to stations across the system to alert people as they arrived that there was no BART service. Calls were made to bus agencies asking them to scale up their service as much as possible and to offer free rides from our stations. The San Francisco Bay Ferry deployed their larger vessels to help. BART General Manager Robert Powers was inside the Operations Control Center to receive rapid updates and monitor performance.  

“We apologize for the disruptive morning and not having train service to get people where they need to go,” said Powers. “Reliability is our brand, and we understand the impact when the system isn’t working. This came down to the fact our control room did not have visibility of our system, and we will not run service if we can’t guarantee safety. We will learn from this incident and are committed to continuous improvement. We are grateful to our partner transit agencies who were able to help our riders this morning.” 

BART does not anticipate this issue further impacting service today. Crews will continue to investigate all related equipment and if equipment replacement or repairs are necessary.