The evening rush hour was a complete mess for BART passengers as the system experienced a computer network outage on Thursday.
This led to the closure of several railway stations and thousands of passengers were forced to find alternative routes to their destinations.
BART rider Michael Brazil boarded the train at the 12th Street stop in Oakland and was actually planning to go to Fremont. But his trip was canceled.
“I was shocked,” Brazil said. “I had no idea what was going on.”
Brazil, like everyone else on his train, was dropped off at Bay Fair Station in San Leandro.
“I just had my headphones on and they just told me I had to get off the BART,” he said. “I didn’t really hear what was going on, but I saw everyone leaving, so I just had to go.”
Brazil was one of many who had to find an alternate way home. Four BART stations were closed and trains had to turn around here due to a computer problem. BART provided bus bridges to deal with the network computer outage. Many ended up calling friends and family for a ride as Uber was in high demand.
“I wanted to take Uber, but it was very expensive because everyone wanted to take Uber and the fares were pretty high,” said BART driver Sarah Izadi.
BART said the system went offline around 10 a.m. Thursday. The cause of the network outage is still under investigation.
“It’s a computer network problem that has affected our train control system,” said Chris Filippi, a BART spokesman. “What that means in practice for us is that if we can’t detect the train control, we can’t run the trains safely on the track.”
BART is in the early stages of a major upgrade of the system that will hopefully prevent problems like Thursday’s and allow them to improve service by running more trains.
“We are actually pursuing a train control renewal program,” Filippi said. “We want to move from our current system, which we have had since it was commissioned 50 years ago, to a new and advanced communications-based train control system.”
Passengers were largely relaxed about the delay, although many reported that the disruption added at least an hour to their commute.
BART said it would be years before the new system was operational, but replacing the train control system was a priority.
