BART equipment issue halts service between South Hayward and Berryessa stations
By Tim Fang
BART service has been halted between South Hayward and the Berryessa station in San Jose during the Friday morning commute, officials said.
Around 5:20 a.m., the agency issued a service advisory about the issue, which they said involved an equipment problem. In a subsequent update, BART said wayside equipment was damaged due to suspected vandalism.
As of about 6:30 a.m., BART said crews were working on repairs, but there is no estimated time on when service would resume through the area.
BART spokesperson Chris Filippi told CBS News Bay Area, “We have crews on the scene and additional staff responding at this point to make repairs and to gather more information on exactly what happened.”
Other parts of the system in the East Bay, San Francisco and Peninsula are not affected. Green Line trains from Daly City are going as far as the Bayfair station in San Leandro, while Orange Line trains from Richmond are going as far as Hayward.
The agency has sent extra staff to help at stations with no train service. AC Transit is providing free mutual bus service connecting impacted stations between Hayward and Milpitas.
Friday’s incident follows several other high profile service disruptions in recent months. Last month, issues in the Transbay Tube led to major delays, while computer issues led to hours-long shutdowns of the system in May and September.
When asked about the recent issues, Filippi noted that the customer on-time rate remains over 90% even after the disruptions.
“BART typically is a reliable service, but having said that, we have to acknowledge that even at over 90%, that doesn’t matter this morning. That doesn’t matter for folks who impacted by this major service disruption. We certainly apologize to those folks,” he said.
