Trolley Tuesday 7/13/21 - A Brief History of the Bay Area Rapid Transit, Part 2

If you look at the entire timeline of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), one might be inclined to think that this world-famous transit system might not work on paper. After all, it shrank from its planned service coverage of nine counties to three, was entirely insular due to its unique gauge and prototype operations, and had enough neglectful management and accidents to turn the average person into a motorist (or at the very least, a bicyclist). Even after becoming the heroes of the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, many people assumed that the BART would fade into memory like so many of its predecessors. And yet, as of 2021, those iconic, space-age silver trains continue to roll into the future whether it, or its passengers, want it to or not. On Today's Trolley Tuesday, we finish our brief history of the Bay Area Rapid Transit by examining its recent history and how it's continued to maintain its relevance to the average Bay Area commuter.

The BART has Landed

The BART SFO terminal extension under construction.
The roadways overhead are for the "Peoplemover".
(Tutor Perini Corporation)

The interior of the new SFO station, with
a 9-car train to Dublin.
(Curbed SF)

Following the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989, BART's managers felt they could finally get back into the business of expanding service areas and providing better service for their passengers. San Mateo County had previously "bought-into" BART by providing money without having to officially join the transit agency, and this gave BART the drive to begin building towards their southern terminal of San Francisco International Airport (SFO). The ground broke on the airport extension in November 1997, right after the Colma station opened in 1996, and the delay in starting merely stemmed from budget issues. Four new stations were also added to the system: SFO Station, South San Francisco, San Bruno, and Millbrae, with the latter sporting cross-platform transfers to the larger Caltrain commuter rail system. Unfortunately, despite adding on 8.7 miles of track from Daly City, the expected ridership fell well below the expected average of 50,000 people a year, only drawing a peak of 37,200 riders in 2008. Because of this underperformance, the San Mateo County Transit District (Samtrans) had a legal row with BART that resulted with Samtrans paying BART $32 million up front and $2 millon yearly to keep the SFO line running. Hang on, I think I have a meme for this...

I swear this took me, like, an hour to make.
(Trailer Park Boys)

North Concord Station, which skirts the line of being
both an outdoor infill and kinda-underground station.
(Pi.1415926535

In the meantime, new spur lines also began popping up around the East Bay to extend the BART deeper into inland California. The first big spur line was the North Concord/Martinez branch that formed the Yellow Line to Antioch, opening for service in December 16, 1995. The route followed what originally was part of the Oakland, Antioch & Eastern interurban line, though in a way that also avoided any level crossings with the road or freeways. The next line to open was the Pittsburg/Bay Point line in December 7, 1996, and the Castro Valley and Dublin/Pleasanton lines in May 10, 1997. The last line mentioned, the Dublin/Pleasanton line, actually anticipated its opening in the 1990s by having a station as well as train control facilities already online and constructed, but budget difficulties meant the last bit to West Dublin and Pleasanton had to wait to be finished until 2011, at a cost of $106 million ($122 million today). The newest BART branch to open, the Silicon Valley Extension to Santa Clara County (one of the original BART charter members) was finally approved in 2000 and, as a result, Santa Clara County bought-into BART like San Mateo County without actually joining the organization.

ABC7 San Francisco's map of the new Silicon Valley Extension into San Jose.
(ABC7 San Francisco)

The Best Safety Record?

A 2002 view of BART's original solid-state Westinghouse computer.
(Itscalifornia.org)

The cab of a BART "D" series car, showing all the telemetry
gear but none of the controls.
(Eric Fischer)

Early planners for BART assumed that automation would take away the danger aspect from riding public transit by removing any margin for human error. While this has most certainly been the case, incidents like the Fremont Flyer also prove that this system can fail through technology. The original Westinghouse computer, a long-time source of delays and glitches, was replaced overtime from what BART called "Pong-era technology", and it has (to its credit) kept the trains from crashing into each other. What it hasn't stopped, unfortunately, is the derailments. Due to the age of the system, the specific way the flanges are profiled against the rail, and the high service speeds run by the trains, it's very obvious why derailments happen when the trains decide to throw themselves off the track. 

In-house investigators look over the BART train after the Oakland City Center derailment.
(SFGATE)

A BART train almost slides off the edge on the
Pittsburgh/Bay Point Line, with clean-up crews.
(The Mercury News)

One of the more notable incidents happened on December 10, 2009, when a Richmond-bound train jumped the tracks 250 feet outside the Oakland City Center/12th Street station. Passengers noticed the train jostling more unnaturally than usual, and even BART mentioned that the incident was "very minor" with the derailment happening "very slowly". Another unfortunate derailment came on the Pittsburgh/Bay Point line on the evening of February 24, 2014, when a ten-car out-of-service train hit the interlocking switches and jumped the tracks, jackknifing across both tracks and leaving the lead car dangling off the edge of the overpass. Tellingly, both incidents used the same lead cars for rolling stock, the "C" Series cabcars (more information on them below). Despite these incidents, BART has been able to bounce back and continue modernizing, but there is one incident that still leaves a mark on their passenger relations to this day.

Unlike most, if not all, railroads, BART trains have flat-profile wheels and rails
instead of slightly tapered like all railroads, supposedly for speed and smoothness.
Still does not stop them flying off the rails.
(Altamont Press)

Fruitvale Station

Oscar Grant with his daughter, Tatiana.
(SF Chronicle)

On January 1, 2009, at 2:15 AM, Oakland resident Oscar Grant III was detained by BART police officers after being mistaken for being involved in a street fight on board one of the trains. After being kneed in the head by BART officer Anthony Pirone and pinned down, fellow officer Johannes Mehserle pulled out his gun and shot Grant. According to contemporary police reports, Grant was "disobeying instructions and cursing at officers" when in reality, witnesses to the incident saw Grant pleading for his life, all over being mistaken for one of the people in the fight. Despite BART Officer Marysol Dominici testifying, "If they would've followed orders, this wouldn't have happened", it was later found that Pirone was lying about detaining the right people and various cellphone footage saw him and Mehserle throwing Grant about. BART spokespeople maintained that the officers were just "defending themselves" and formally apologized to Grant's family, but this set off protests up and down the Bay Area who saw the shooting as yet another racist attack on innocent lives in America. When all was said and done, Johannes Meserle was charged with involuntary manslaughter rather than second-degree murder. He was eventually released from prison on June 13, 2011.

Charles Hill.
(SFGATE)

This, unfortunately, was not the only act of transit police violence to happen on BART. On July 3, 2011, an older gentleman named Charles Hill was killed at Civic Center station in San Francisco while being suspected of carrying a knife. In order to avoid another big protest, BART shut down cellphone services on August 12 so as to keep people from protesting at Civic Center Station. This caused an even bigger protest against BART management, with comparisons being drawn to former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The public outcry for BART's censorship was so great that it was later found that through the FCC, BART's cellphone shutdown violated the Communications Act of 1934 through "deliberate interference". The officer that shot Charles Hill was later found, in February 2012, to have "acted in self defense" and did not face charges. The only consequence of this incident was an amended cellphone shutdown act wherein BART would only do so "in the most extraordinary circumstances that threaten the safety of District passengers, employees and other members of public, the destruction of District property, or the substantial disruption of public transit service" with police only instructed to "arrest individuals who break the law". 

Rotten Rolling Stock

Well, that was rather troubling to talk about. But, in the interest of just telling the facts, we had to anyway. Black lives matter, after all. Now, onto something more lighthearted. 

It's almost like getting on the monorail at Disneyland.
(Bart.gov)

"B" Series trailer cars under construction at Rohr.
(Pueblo Railway Museum)

When first developed in the 1960s, construction of BART's rolling stock fell to Rohr Aircraft Corporation, a company based out of Chula Vista, CA, and now wholly owned as a division of Raytheon Technologies. The BART contract was the first mass transit project the company ever took, and eventually led the trend of aircraft companies like Boeing and Bombardier finding failure and profitability in light and heavy rail. The original BART Rohr cars, dubbed the "A" and "B" series, were constructed between 1968 and 1975, with the first cars going into service in 1972. 

These stainless-steel-skinned trains were controlled by the Operations Control Center and only needed an operator to call each station and control the doors, with the motors originally being Westinghouse 1463 DC traction motors. Inside, the "A"s and "B"s could sit 60 people and cram about 200 at absolute crush load. The only difference between the two cars were that the "A"s possessing a fiberglass streamlined front with an operator's cab, while the "B"s were merely mid-train trailers. These cars were later rebuilt by ADtranz/Bombardier between 1998 and 2002 with upgraded three-phase AC motors and train heating, but they continued to be rather old and noisy as they went without any significant replacement for quite some time. 

A mix of old and new at the BART Richmond facility.
(Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)

A BART C1 train bound for Millbrae departs El Cerrito Plaza.
Without the streamlined front, they look quite... monolithic.
(N Ford Transit System Films)

The first attempt to replace the "A" series cabcars came in 1987, when Alstom stepped up to the plate and constructed the "C1" series car. In short order, the "C1s" were the "B" series cars but with a cab and four seats lost. These cars also doubled as mid-train trailers when needed, and helped speed up consisting in yards without the need for switching. Later orders, dubbed the "C2" were built by Morrison-Knudsen and only differed from the "C1s" through their blue-grey interiors and flip-up handicap seats. All of the trains here originally had brown seats and carpets, but this was later upgraded (or downgraded?) to a smooth spray-on composite flooring and harder-seating, easier-to-clean blue polyurethane seats. 

This is the worst time vortex I've ever found myself in.
(Bechtel)

By far, the biggest complaint of the "A-B-C" series was the noise of the cars going around curves and through tunnels, as this motorman can attest when describing a Rohr train going through the Transbay Tunnel as "just like being in a washing machine." Even BART themselves have compared the noise and unevenness of the rails to "Doctor Who's TARDIS run amok." Despite the noise sometimes reaching up to 100 decibels and averaging at or above 90 decibels in some locations, BART have tried to remedy this by smoothing down rails in the Transbay tunnel and making the new "D" series trains much quieter inside.

The new "D" trains being constructed at Bombardier of Pittsburgh, CA.
The design may have changed but the squat profile remains.
(BART) 

The brand new "D" series trains at on the Daly City service
at Berryessa, June 13, 2020.
(N Ford Transit System Films)

The "D" Trains, built by Bombardier in Pittsburgh, California, were a definite need for the BART when they finally entered service in 2018, as the system now sported another disturbing accolade: The longest gap between new replacement equipment in America. Most of the Rohr stock was now 40 years old by 2016, which meant more frequent breakdowns, downtimes, and increased congestion across the line. Bombardier Transportation was awarded the construction contract on May 10, 2012 and, on November 21, 2013, the grand total of BART's order was 775 new railcars. 

The interior of the new "D" trains, with seats for everybody.
(Mass Transit)

"D" Train No. 3001 decides that the day's testing is
over as it lodges its face into a sand berm on April 22, 2016.
(ABC7 San Francisco)

The new "D" cars (and "E" trailers) featured 54 seats per car, bike racks, and computerized screens displaying route details and destinations. The trains even featured a new row of doors in the middle, speeding up loading times. However, the cars were not without their foibles. On April 22, 2016, BART "D" Series train No. 3001 was undergoing testing in Hayward when it crashed into a sand berm at Industrial Parkway and Pacific Street. Transit fans were quick to point out the event's similarity to the infamous Fremont Flyer, with some (like me) even hailing it as a new tradition for BART to crash their trains before entering service. Thankfully, no damage was reported and the cause of the accident was later revealed to be a wire jammed into a cabinet door. Due to the accident also happening at a low speed, 3001 was quickly refurbished and readied for service.

Weird Experimental Trains

The odd and fantastical cable liner, looking like
something from Busch Gardens instead of a transit service.
(Pi.1415936535)

Due to the immense costs of building new spur lines that required a dedicated right-of-way and stations, BART has since trialed two other railway systems to connect smaller parts of the line. One of these lines was the Oakland Airport Connector, originally the "AirBART" bus service. Due to the short distance from the Oakland Coliseum station to Oakland International Airport (OAK), BART eschewed a traditional short line (or even a spur line) for something much... weirder.

 The boffins at Doppelmayr Cable Car refer to it as an "automated guideway transit" or AGT, but to Oakland locals, the "Coliseum-Oakland International Airport" line is simply dubbed the "Cable Liner." The line has two stations, one at the Coliseum connecting to the BART Blue (Dublin/Pleasanton), Orange (Berryessa/North San Jose-Richmond), and Green (Berryessa/North San Jose-Daly City line) lines and the other at the airport itself. Along the way, the elevated trains pass over the Amtrak lines and the I-880 freeway and past the Doolittle maintenance and storage facility before ducking under State Route 61 to reach the airport. At only 3.2 miles, the line is rather rapid and provides more flexibility for airport riders to go by train than by rideshare or bus.

The eBart, officially the East Contra Costa BART Extension, at rest.
(BART)

The eBart's new interior, still spacious despite the smaller gauge.
(East Bay Times)

The other non-standard train hosted by this... quite non-standard company is the "eBart", an extension of the BART Yellow Line between Antioch and SFO that runs between Pittsburgh and Antioch. Originally planned to run on Union Pacific's existing right-of-way through State Route 4, BART planners instead decided to make an all-freeway median extension for the line into east Contra Costa County. However, in breaking from tradition, the line is not 5'6" Indian Gauge but 4'8.5" standard gauge and actually operated by Stadler GTW rail diesel cars. The choice for the smaller gauge and diesel railcars was to save on construction costs, as there was no need to build dedicated electric infrastructure or custom-order new ties, tracks, or station designs. The new line also counted as a direct part of the Yellow Line, despite passengers having to transfer between trains, meaning anyone with a valid fare had no need to pay for a transfer at Pittsburgh. The "eBart" is planned to extend up State Route 4 to Oakly, Byron, or even Tracy, but only time will tell.

The Future Is... Now?

BART's new map, as of June 13, 2020.
(Public Domain)

A still from the film "Bay Area Transit", contrasting how
the BART has changed since its Key System days.
The film can be watched here.
(KTVU)

For a prototype system of the 1960s that's aged harder than New Tomorrowland at Disneyland, the BART continues to be a relevant and required piece of Bay Area commuting that 411,000 weekday riders (2019 average) depend on. There was a lot riding on this system to fail, from a growing automobile culture in the wake of National City Lines shutting down all but a few streetcar lines in the bay to the withdrawal and lost faith of several interested counties, to poor worker-management relations, to even wrecks, controversy and a reputation of being just another crime-ridden, filthy urban rapid transit that would sure steal someone's wallet or give them some new disease. 

However, despite all of this, the BART continues to make great strides into the 21st century in becoming the dependable rapid transit it should have been to begin with. With the opening of the Silicon Valley Extension on June 13, 2020, the BART now reaches into North San Jose with further extensions planned to Santa Clara and Diridon. One can now even ride from San Jose to San Francisco directly without having to change a train on the Green Line. No matter what direction BART takes, it certainly proves the aphorism true: when you start from the bottom and stay at the bottom, the only way to go is up. Here's to the Bay Area Rapid Transit: America's transit future, today.

Let us now ride our commuter train home,
into the setting sun over the San Francisco Bay...
(alamy stock photo)

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included a Mercury News article on the Pleasant Hill derailment, an SFGate article on the Oakland derailment, the official eBart website, the official BART website's history page, and the various photo authors credited here. The BART gifs in our posts are made by Alex Stroshane and can be found on his website here. On Thursday, we finally depart the Bay Area inbound to Fresno as we look at yet another Henry Huntington transit enterprise. For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!