An abundance of turbulence for BART in 2025 continued Wednesday, when the transit agency had to shut down one of its lines and suspend service on another one.

The second of the two issues happened about 11:50 a.m. when a tree fell on the tracks between the South Hayward and Fremont stations, BART spokesperson Chris Filippi said. That forced closure of BART’s Orange Line between those two stations. Trains going north from the South Hayward station were operating on the line, Filippi said, as were trains operating south of the Fremont station.

Related Articles

Delays hobble BART service after maintenance work and equipment woes

Letters: Where’s the accountability for BART’s police chief?

Man stabbed outside Peninsula BART station, suspect at large

Teen injured in shooting on BART train in Oakland

Sales tax to help fund Bay Area transit appears to be headed for 2026 ballot

The Orange Line serves customers between the Berryessa station in San Jose and the Richmond station.

AC Transit busses 200 and 216 honored BART tickets between the South Hayward and Fremont stations, as didbus 9, which helped customers navigate the route between the Union City and South Hayward stations. The Union City station was the only other station affected by the closure.

The mess on the Orange Line happened hours after BART closed its entire Red Line following a power issue between the Glen Park and Montgomery stations in San Francisco. Filipi said BART closed the line — which serves riders between Richmond and Millbrae and goes through San Francisco International Airport — to keep the San Francisco lines from becoming too congested during the outage.

Passengers coming from Richmond were able to take the Orange Line to a transfer station in Oakland, where they could board the Yellow Line that runs from Antioch to the airport. BART said busses and shuttles were available for passengers on that line who needed to get to Millbrae from the airport.

Travelers returning from the airport and going to Richmond were urged to transfer to a Richmond-bound Orange Line train.

It’s not the first time BART has closed its Red Line in recent months. BART last closed its Red Line service on Aug. 21, the first day that passengers were able to swipe credit cards and ATM cards instead of Clipper cards in its new Tap and Ride system of pay.

Traveling at times has been chaotic on BART recently. Service on the whole system shut down Sept. 5 before the 5 a.m. opening and stayed closed until about 9:25 a.m. BART blamed a computer network issue for that tough day.

BART also lost service on its entire system on May 9, when it closed all 50 stations for nearly five hours. That shutdown was blamed on a network connectivity problem that prevented controllers from seeing train locations on the tracks. That made safe operation of the system impossible.

The other issues included an  electrical outage July 2 brought an afternoon closure on the Yellow Line in eastern and central Contra Costa County; a fire near the tracks between the Daly City and Balboa Park stations that shut down service between those stations on May 27; and a fire near the San Leandro station on May 26 that interrupted trains between the Lake Merritt, Berryessa and Dublin stations.

BART did not say when it expected the Red Line to be open.

Please check back for updates.