BART Resumes Regular Service After Crippling Computer Failure

BART says expects trains to run normally today, Tuesday, after computer problems in its Operations Control Center caused a major interruption of service.

The monitoring system that allows transit managers to see where trains are on the tracks had stopped functioning around 7:30 p.m. due to what appeared to be a failure of a router handling operations data, BART explained late Monday. Service advisories and real time departure updates on the transit agency's website were also affected.

Trains continued moving to nearby stations to let passengers off immediately following the malfunction, but as of 8:14 p.m. BART was advising customers to find alternative transportation.

Very limited service controlled by radio dispatch started running around 8:40 p.m. and BART had arranged with AC Transit and Muni to honor its patrons' tickets. Still, many were left stranded or endured long waits to reach their destinations.

“I’ve been riding since BART first opened and nothing like this has ever occurred,” said Bill Pinkham, after he pulled up to the del Norte station in El Cerrito on his bicycle Monday night. He had planned to board BART at the Richmond station, but finding no trains running there had ridden to del Norte, in vain as it turned out.

Trains began returning to the regular schedule at approximately 9:52 p.m.

The last time BART experienced a shutdown of a similar scale was an outage that impacted an evening commute on March 29, 2006, but that breakdown was fixed within 70 minutes, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

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