Ten more new BART cars ready to hit the tracks
HAYWARD » Ten more shiny new BART cars are expected to hit the tracks next week.
Since debuting for passenger service in January, only the first ten-car test train has roamed BART’s rails and mostly during non-peak hours. Adding the second train is significant because it will now be easier for the agency to prepare trains to start carrying passengers.
The California Public Utilities Commission, a state regulatory agency, approved the second batch of cars Tuesday, according to a letter from the agency. It had mandated a second in-person inspection to see the new train cars in action after BART failed a key safety inspection last year, but it won’t require future inspections of each new train, Roger Clugston, the deputy director for rail safety at the commission, said in the letter.
“The documentation and test run of (this train) demonstrate the cars are acceptable and ready
for (passenger) service,” Clugston said. “Going forward, no operational field runs will be required for placing cars in service.”
The debut earlier this year of BART’s first ten-car train was a milestone for the agency, which is replacing all 669 of its train cars with 775 new ones, a $2.6 billion effort to update its aging and sometimes unreliable fleet, add capacity by running longer trains and improve passengers’ experience.
The first ten-car prototype train took much longer than anticipated to hit the tracks. BART had initially planned to have 60 cars by the end of 2017; it had only 26 on hand as of Tuesday and plans to have 80 operating by the end of the year, said BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost.
And, the first ten-car train has spent some time in the repair shop since debuting, as well. The agency did not answer specific questions about how long the new test train has been out of service — saying they needed three to four weeks to compile the data. Trost emphasized the first train is a prototype and time in the shop was expected.
“They’ve had both planned preventive maintenance, unscheduled repairs due to failures, and they have been out of service for scheduled modifications,” Trost said in an email. “Since they are prototype test cars, we aren’t terribly surprised or concerned when they have to be taken out of service for unscheduled work; it’s part of the process.”