BART has a plan to fix ‘unacceptable’ Sunday delays.
Riders can expect longer waits between trains, but improved reliability is promised
SAN FRANCISCO » BART officials have gotten an earful from riders about the dismal state of their Sunday service, when passengers encounter long waits between trains and spiraling delays mean the system can’t keep up with even a reduced schedule.
Now, as BART tries to reverse a trend of steeply declining weekend ridership, there is a plan to make the system more reliable on Sundays.
But it’s going to come at the expense of riders’ other big complaint: They are going to have to wait even longer between trains.
Starting Feb. 16, trains throughout the system will run every 24 minutes on Sundays, up from every 20 minutes.
Though the longer gap will make arriving at a station just as your train departs sting even more, John McCormick, the head of BART’s operations planning and support department, said it will allow the system to do a better job of sticking to its posted schedule.
“We have lost the public trust for on-time performance on Sundays and must find a better strategy,” Mc
Cormick said during a presentation Thursday to BART’s board of directors, in which he called the delays “unacceptable.”
The chief culprit for the delays is a $79.2 million project replacing power cables between San Francisco’s Embarcadero and 24th Street Mission stations, which forces trains to use a single track through that stretch most Sundays. The project has been the bane of Sunday riders passing through San Francisco since it started earlier this year.
The problem, McCormick said, is that the current 20- minute gap doesn’t give trains enough time to get through the single-track section.
That’s because each train has just 10 minutes to get through that section, which includes four stops, three of them at the busy downtown San Francisco stations. If a train takes longer than 10 minutes, it holds up the train that is waiting to go through the area in the opposite direction.
If that next train can’t make up the time — or falls further behind, as often happens because the station platforms are packed with people — the delays start stacking up, and as the day goes on BART falls further behind schedule.
“There is just no cushion,” McCormick said, and no capacity to run trains more frequently through San Francisco. “The overall result is customer trip delays, missed connections and generally unreliable Sunday service.”
With more time between trains, McCormick said, the system will be able to recover from delays and get back on schedule more easily.
The plan also comes with some good news for East Bay passengers: The system will bring back Sunday service to San Francisco on the Dublin/ Pleasanton line, meaning passengers on that line who want to cross the Bay won’t have to transfer at 12th Street in Oakland. On days with single- tracking work, those trains will only go as far as Montgomery Station; when there is no single tracking, they will go to Daly City.
The cable replacement project between Embarcadero and 24th Street Mission will continue through 2021 on 28 Sundays each year. Then it shifts farther down the line to the area between 24th Street Mission and Balboa Park, where the project is scheduled to run from 2022 to 2024.
Several directors at Thursday’s meeting said they understand riders might not be happy to hear they will encounter longer Sunday wait times.
Their hope is that the change allows passengers to more reliably plan their trips around the system’s schedule.
Director Janice Li said she wants BART to consider offering discounts to Sunday riders to make it more attractive, and to reward people who have stuck with the system. BART ridership on weekends this year is down by 12.5% compared with 2018, and that compares with a 3% drop on weekdays.
Sunday service these days “is a little bit like the Warriors,” Li said. The comparison to the beleaguered 3-13 team wasn’t a compliment.
“It’s not easy to watch, and we need to give back to those who are still sticking with us,” Li said.