The primary transit system in the San Francisco Bay Area was forced to shut down all trains for several hours on Friday morning because of a computer problem, sending commuters scrambling to find alternatives before service resumed shortly after 9 a.m. local time.
Bay Area Rapid Transit, which transports more than 170,000 passengers on weekdays throughout much of the region, said service had been suspended because of a “computer networking” problem. A spokesman for BART said that there had been an issue with powering the train control system, preventing trains from operating.
Though train service had resumed across the system, major delays were expected.
The outage came as BART has struggled mightily to attract passengers after the Covid-19 pandemic. Many residents in the tech-driven Bay Area have been able to continue working remotely, and BART has faced one of the steepest declines in ridership of any major U.S. transit system. Passenger traffic on the Bay Area system remains less than half of what it was before the pandemic, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
It was not immediately clear what had caused the networking problem. During the morning commute, traffic was thick at the freeway to the Bay Bridge, which connects Oakland and other East Bay communities to San Francisco. Riders searched for alternatives, from car pools to local bus services and ferries.
Chris Filippi, a spokesman for BART, said in a statement that the computer issues had affected all 50 stations within the system.
At the El Cerrito Plaza station in the East Bay city of El Cerrito, Calif., a BART official turned away commuters wearing backpacks and clutching big tote bags before service resumed. A handful of commuters stood on the curb anxiously browsing through ride-share options and looking at bus maps.
Roya Koutchekinia, who arrived at the station to commute to her job at a library in San Francisco, waited for an Uber driver to take her to the city. She repeatedly refreshed the app as she worried she might be late to her office.
“I was looking for bus options, but I don’t think I’m going to find anything that will get me there on time,” said Ms. Koutchekinia, who lives in El Cerrito.
BART may have been fortunate that the outage occurred on a Friday, when commuter travel is usually lighter because many office employees tend to work from home at the end of the workweek.
Other transit systems appeared to be operating without major issues on Friday. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which operates Muni bus and rail services, said that it was helping BART riders at certain stations. The San Francisco Bay Ferry said that it was using larger ferries wherever possible to help transport more people.
The ferry service said that it had seen an increase in ridership on Friday morning as a result of the BART shutdown. Because it was Friday, when fewer workers commute, ferries had the capacity to take on more riders, the service said.
Around 8 a.m., traffic estimates showed that it would take more than 50 minutes to drive from downtown Oakland to the Civic Center in San Francisco. A BART ride between the two locations usually takes about 15 minutes.
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