The opening to the week’s morning commute on BART turned into another exercise in frustration for riders Monday, when the agency had to close two of its travel lines because of an equipment problem, officials said.
Trains initially moved through the TransBay Tube on only one track, and direct service on its Red Line and Green Line were completely down until about 6:15 a.m.., the agency said.
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At about 6:15 a.m., BART issued a service directory that more than one track was open in the Transbay Tube and that the Green Line was running again. Those issues caused a 20-minute delay through the tube and in all other directions.
The agency about 6:30 a.m. removed its advisory about the Red Line and said that line also was running. During the shutdown, passengers on the Red and Green lines were encouraged to catch a Yellow Line train running from San Francisco to Antioch at a transfer station.
The Red Line runs from Richmond to Millbrae, while the Green Line serves riders from Daly City to the Lake Berryessa station.
It was the second straight Monday that BART had commute problems, and such problems have become a bit more than a regular occurrence on the system this year. This was the second time in two weeks that BART shut down at least one of its travel lines.
A week ago, BART had to close down its Orange Line between the South Hayward and Fremont station when a tree fell on the tracks. That issue came after BART closed its entire Red Line on the same day because of a power issue between the Glen Park and Montgomery stations in San Francisco.
The issues have been part of many chaotic days on BART this year. 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.
BART’s entire system went down 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, which made safe operation of the system impossible.
Also, an electrical outage July 2 that 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 shut down service between those stations on May 27; and a fire near the San Leandro station on May 26 stopped trains between the Lake Merritt, Berryessa and Dublin stations.
