BART seeking new uses for cars at end of the line
The possibilities for BART’s old, soon-to-be-junked legacy fleet seem endless. The cars could be revived as taco trucks, futuristic condos or railthemed diners with Naugahyde seats.
They could be hollowed out and transformed into a lounge or gazebo, like one made from retired railcars at a Chicago apartment development. They could be shipped off to India or Bangladesh, decorated with bunting and repurposed on another municipal transit line. Or, if one BART enthusiast gets his way, the cars’ aluminum shells could be flattened and redesigned to make hot rods.
That last idea drew skepticism from BART spokesman Jim Allison, who
had a different suggestion. “It might make more sense to make a Ken Kesey bus,” he said, referring to the psychedelic '60s road trip.
As the Bay Area transit agency introduces its new Bombardier fleet, officials are seeking suggestions from the public on what to do with 669 older cars, some of which have trundled along since the 1970s.
BART’s board will hear a presentation Thursday on the challenge of decommissioning these vehicles by the target date of August 2023, roughly a year after officials expect to have all 775 new Bombardier cars.
“This schedule is a balancing act,” said special projects manager Philip Kamhi, who is handling the transition. He noted that BART has to keep enough trains in service to meet rising demand, while phasing out the old ones as new ones come in. That churn has to start this year, officials say, before the agency’s storage capacity runs out.
Aside from the urgency of their timeline, BART managers must also consider which train retirement options are most cost-effective. The Federal Transit Administration assisted in purchasing three of the four older fleets, and if those cars have a market value greater than $5,000 apiece, the administration is entitled to its share of the sales proceeds.
Then there are the limitations of BART’s aluminum frame, which in many ways is less durable than the carbon steel of the New York subway. That’s why BART officials couldn’t just dump the old cars into the ocean, the way their counterparts at New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority did when they turned antiquated subway trains into an artificial reef.
That idea may seem enticing, Kamhi said, but if BART cars were sunk in the briny bay, “they would degrade very quickly.”
But other ideas abound. The cars could be donated to trade schools for engineering classes, handed to the U.S. Army for drills, sold for scrap, placed in museums, reused as homeless shelters or tiny homes, converted to Airbnb vacation rentals or mothballed for special train service. The parts of some cars might be salvaged and transplanted like vital organs when a Bombardier car breaks down.
When BART announced its plan on Twitter this month, Berkeley artist and designer Alfred Twu replied with an architectural rendering of “aBARTments” — rail conveyances stacked like Jenga pieces atop a concrete building. With their metallic walls and sharp, geometric surfaces, the cars resemble an edgy high-rise.
“The concept is not meant to be super-realistic,” Twu said, noting that BART cars would probably make more sense as backyard in-law units, which wouldn’t require heavy-duty engineering.
Still, his idea took off on social media.
Curators at the Western Railway Museum in Suisun City are also eyeing the antique fleet, hoping to place BART in a display among vintage trolleys and locomotives.
Kamhi said he’s compiling a list of every idea he’s seen, no matter how far-fetched. It covers a wide range: play structures; sculptural installations: long, low-slung apartments with picture windows.
Many of these proposals would require “quite a few modifications,” Kamhi said. But he’s willing to entertain all of them.