Did you see this article in the SF Chronicle?
BART is behind schedule on rolling out the new Bombardier cars. Are you surprised? No, neither am I. There isn’t a timeline in history that BART hasn’t optimistically projected and missed. We are now looking at 2020 before the Milpitas and Berryessa stations will open—only three years behind schedule—and now BART trots out a “Gee, we’re sorry. Things didn’t go as planned!” for the new cars. BART is “hoping” to have five Bombardier trains (if they’re full trains, that’s 10 x 5 = 50 cars) yet only 35 have been certified for use and only one train is currently in use. So in the next two months the CPUC has to certify at least 15 more cars or else BART will be running short seven car trains. Oh, and that will mean that there won’t be any cars that BART can use to train new operators—unless they remove some of those 35 cars from daily use. Notice that “hope” does not equate with “will”.
BART is supposed to have all 775 Bombardier cars in the system by spring 2022 as well as a new railcar storage facility in Hayward and five new substations to provide power. Yet it’s already behind schedule on installing the new cars because of unforeseen mechanical problems.
There is also a new super-techy electronic control system planned so they can run more trains. Yet if you recall BART has a sorry history when it comes to control systems. BART has never been able to live up to its initial projections of being able to handle a train every 90 seconds. I believe there have been at least three lawsuits by BART against the companies that provided the control systems. The first one was against the original company, Westinghouse, after it was apparent their system was flawed and could not prevent accidents. The second one I can’t recall the name of the company but I do remember that BART squandered an enormous amount of money in hopes the company could come through and it couldn’t. The third was in 2006 against GE, yet another vendor. In other words in the 46 years that BART has been running trains it has never had an electronic control system that could live up to the 90 seconds per train hype.
Are we to believe that those 775 new cars will be fully deployed by 2022? Get real! BART blows its projections by years. If we have full deployment by 2025 we will be lucky. Those BART press releases are only good for lining bird cages.
So for at least the next four years we will have to live with our ever-increasingly filthy and miserably crowded old BART cars. And don’t forget that important BART rule: you are not allowed to board cars that are crowded with your bike. So guess who’s going to be enjoying sitting around those lovely BART stations waiting for a train that has space? Happy BART riding!
The Chain Letter 