Matier & Ross:
BART is on the brink because it is running low on parts and repair crews.
When BART rolls out for the Monday morning commute, officials will be holding their breath that the system isn’t hit with another mysterious power surge — because BART is running low on spare parts and repair crews to fix the dozens of cars that have already been knocked out of service.
In fact, BART has so few cars that officials are hesitant to send them out on test runs over suspect sections of tracks — fearing even more will go down.
“I’ve never seen the impact ( on the system) like this,” said
Dave Hardt, BART’s chief mechanical officer.
BART officials are at a loss to say how they would handle another round of car knockouts like the ones that hit the system for two weeks starting in late February, then again last week. Eighty cars were damaged in the first round, and another 50 wound up in the shop last week — leaving BART dozens of cars short of its normal service fleet of 579 cars.
“We can ill afford to lose any more rail cars for whatever reason,” said BART spokesman Jim Allison.
The power surges are shorting out a semiconductor component called a thyristor. With none left in stock, BART has placed an order with the man-
ufacturer for as many as 100 of the parts — but they won’t start arriving until August. In the meantime, some thyristors are being stripped from cars that have been sidelined for good because they were damaged in accidents.
But now, BART is also facing a shortage of technicians able to do the work. The transit agency has 91 on staff, and three more will start next month — but it’s still trying to fill another 10 slots.
Even in a best- case scenario, it could be months before BART is back to normal.
“We’ve got a lot of folks working hard” to fix the problem, Hardt said. “We don’t like to fail, and obviously we are failing.”
Tagging Gascón: The San Francisco police union is taking its feud with District Attorney George Gascón to a whole new level, with a radio ad campaign designed to scorch his chances for statewide office.
The ads say Proposition 47, the 2014 initiative that turned some nonviolent felonies into misdemeanors and shortened some sentences, handed “get- out- of- jail cards” to the thugs breaking into your car. Gascón coauthored the measure, which passed with nearly 60 percent of the vote.
The ads are clearly directed at an audience outside the city — for starters, they’re being aired on KCBS- AM, which is heard far and wide in Northern and Central California.
Police Officers Association President Martin Halloran declares in the ad that “crime is on the rise” throughout the state and that “career criminals have no fear of being punished.”
“If you leave your purse in the car and it winds up in the hands of a criminal, under ‘ Gascón’s Law’ it’s only a slap on the wrist,” Halloran says.
District attorney spokesman Max Szabo slammed the ad, saying, “Anyone who tells you Prop. 47 is causing an increase in property crime does not have a leg to stand on.”
Such arguments, he said, “are not supported by data, nor are they supported by the changes in law made by Prop. 47. For example, breaking into a car can still be charged as a felony.”
Maybe, but police union spokesman and ad scriptwriter Nathan Ballard notes that a number of cities saw increases in property crimes through at least the first half of last year.
“There are car breakins in the East Bay, in the North Bay, in the South Bay and the Central Valley, and there is a sense out these that these kinds of crimes are on the rise,” Ballard said. “And we think ( Gascón) is responsible.”
And in politics, perception is often reality.
For the bunker: The Oakland City Council appears to have finally learned its lesson from last year’s embarrassing episode when protesters angry about a high- rise housing deal stormed the chambers, chained themselves to the dais and shut down a meeting.
When many of the same protesters showed up the other night to block approval of the 260- unit apartment highrise on East 12th Street, the council was ready for them — well, sort of.
A city crew had been dispatched to lift up every seat in the chambers to make sure there were no locks and chains or other protest gear taped to the underside. Bags were also checked as people went into City Hall.
Nonetheless, the boisterous crowd of nearly 200 won the first round when they managed to break out with musical instruments and chain themselves to the gates separating the audience from the podium.
But this time, rather than calling it a night, the council moved to Plan B — adjourning to a private conference room inside the mayor’s office. They kept everyone out but members of the news media, then proceeded to vote for the housing deal.
And it was all done with prior assurance from the city attorney that it complied with the Brown Act open meeting law.
“The council determined it wanted to finish its meeting,” said Councilman Larry Reid, “and this time we had a plan.”