10 PM (Eve Batey): According to BART spokesperson Jim Allison, BART has “resumed normal service.”
According to Allison, there are currently 32 trains running in the system, and “only 6 are late,” with “very few residual delays.”
“We’re getting back up to speed and getting people moving.” Allison said.
9:25 PM: BART is experiencing delays of at least 30 minutes across its entire train system and has stopped running trains because of a non-emergency computer issue, agency spokesman Linton Johnson said tonight.
The computer glitch started at 7:32 p.m., Johnson said, and involves the computers inside BART’s operations control center.
The problem is preventing the control center from monitoring the location of the system’s trains. “It’s not a safety issue, per se, because the computers on the trackside are able to move the trains,” Johnson said.
However, if a train were to have a mechanical issue, the operations center would normally reroute trains but cannot do so at this time without knowing trains’ locations.
As a result, as of 8:10 p.m., the agency was attempting to get each train to the nearest station so that passengers would be allowed to exit while crews work to resolve the problem.
The trackside computers that control the trains are not affected by the problem, Johnson said.
“We can’t ‘see’ the trains, and so we’re asking most of the trains to stop,” Johnson said.
As of 8:10 p.m., there was no estimate on when normal operations would resume.
Passengers are advised to take alternate transportation.
“We’ve got every crew that we can muster right now scrambling to get to the operations control center and out on the system so that way we can start moving service again on a limited basis,” Johnson said.
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