A bus bridge is continuing today for riders traveling between Pittsburg/Bay Point and North Concord stations as crews work to pinpoint the source of an electrical problem that has damaged around 50 cars in BART’s fleet.
“The system will be crowded because we have less train cars available for service,” spokeswoman Alicia Trost said. She said that while yesterday’s estimate was of 25 damaged cars, that number is now at 50, but that there is not a safety concern for passengers because of the issue. “We were running test cars through the area that experienced the same problem,” she said.
AN ELECTRICAL PROBLEM
“What’s occurring is that when a train is traveling over that section of track (between the two stations), it experiences a high spike in voltage and that is damaging a piece of the propulsion equipment on the train car,” she said.
“There’s no safety risk or concern for any of the passengers, even the ones riding on that exact car that’s having the propulsion equipment failure,” she said. “But we have shut down that section of track because we can’t afford to damage any more train cars; we already have a limited number of cars in our fleet,” she said.
INSPECTIONS AND TESTING
“We did field testing all day (Wednesday), inch-by-inch inspections of the wayside equipment and we found no abnormalities in that inspection,” Trost said. ” We are flying in outside experts to help get to the bottom of what’s causing this problem.”
“PGE has also been on site with us to see if there’ s something they can help us identify, because we know it is an electrical issue of some sort,” she said.
TIPS FOR RIDERS
Riders should listen to station staff and public address announcements for the latest information when arriving to the stations. Announcements will be made if train service is an option between Pittsburg/Bay Point and North Concord. If traveling between these two stations, riders are encouraged to allow for extra travel time.
We apologize for this inconvenience and we are working around the clock to identify the problem and fix it. We would like to thank our riders for their patience and our transit partners for providing the bus bridge.
BART Service Advisories will continue to detail the latest service information.
