The evening rush hour was chaos for BART riders as the network’s computer system suffered a meltdown on Thursday.
As a result, several stations had to close and thousands of travelers had to find alternative ways to reach their destination.
BART rider Michael Brazil boarded at the 12th Street stop in Oakland, headed to Fremont. But his ride was cut short.
“I was shocked,” Brazil said. “I had no idea what was going on.”
Brazil, like all other passengers on the train, was removed from the train at the Bay Fair station in San Leandro.
“I just had my headphones on and they just told me to get off the BART,” he said. “I didn’t really hear what was happening, but I saw everyone leaving, so I just had to get out.”
Brazil was one of many who had to find an alternate route home. Four BART stations were closed and trains were forced to turn around because of a computer problem. BART installed bus bridges while it worked to fix the network computer outage. Many ended up calling friends and family for a ride, as Uber was in high demand.
“I wanted to ride Uber, but it was really expensive because everyone wanted to ride Uber, so the fares were pretty high,” said BART rider Sarah Izadi.
BART said the system went offline around 10 a.m. Thursday. It is still investigating what caused the network outage.
“It’s a computer network issue that affects our train control system,” said Chris Filippi, a BART spokesman. “So what it means to us in practical terms is that if we can’t feel the train control on the track, we can’t run trains safely.”
BART is in the early stages of completely upgrading the system to hopefully prevent problems like Thursday’s. It will also allow them to improve service by running more trains.
“We’re actually doing a replacement program for train control,” Filippi said. “We want to move from our current system, which we’ve had since we started the service 50 years ago, to a new and advanced communications-based train control system.”
Travelers generally coped well with the delays, though many say the outage added at least an hour to their travel time.
BART said it will be years before the new system is operational, but that replacing the train control system is a priority.
