San Francisco’s widely relied upon public transportation system, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), went down early Friday morning due to a “computer networking problem,” according to city officials. The outage brought the entire system to a halt at around 5:00 am local time, forcing commuters to quickly find an alternative travel plan. BART officials announced that service had been restored across the entire system around 9:30 am local time, though a spokesperson for the agency told The San Francisco Standard, “Riders should expect residual major delays as we ramp back up.”
The system’s shutdown, while temporary, caused a considerable number of logistical issues for riders. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the transit system averaged about 175,000 riders on weekdays during the month of March. With BART out of order, riders were forced to shift their commute to buses, ride shares, and other alternatives. Some of those options are cost-prohibitive—San Francisco ranked in the top 10 for most expensive cities for ride sharing. The Chronicle spoke to one person who opted to wait for the trains to start running again rather than take a Lyft that would have cost $70 to get to his destination.
To accommodate the travelers stranded by BART, the San Francisco Municipal Railway offered additional buses and extra trains on some lines. The San Francisco Bay Ferry also used larger boats to make room for more riders, per the Chronicle.
The cause of the outage is still unclear, but a spokesperson for BART did further explain what happened to the SF Standard: “BART was unable to properly power up our train control system, which prevented us from safely operating trains,” the spokesperson said. According to the Chronicle, BART Chief Communications Officer Alicia Trost said the issue occurred after overnight maintenance work, but did not say that was specifically the cause. Instead, she said there were “a lot of different reasons” that could cause the issue. She did rule out the possibility that it was a cyber attack that knocked the system out.
Outages have gotten rarer in recent years for BART, according to the agency’s own data, but delays have remained a major problem. The transport system has undergone cost-cutting measures, as well, which has led to some issues going unaddressed and a hiring freeze being put in place, though the city has spent on increasing police presence on the transit system and new methods for cracking down on unpaid fares.
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