PHOTOS: Crews work to dig out new #BART train stuck in dirt during testing crash in Hayward: https://t.co/58uJUenn2v pic.twitter.com/APAEn7Jpzb
— ABC7 News (@abc7newsBayArea) April 22, 2016
When a brand new BART car — part of the Fleet of the Future we keep hearing so much about — overshot its test track last Friday we all held our breath. At $2,000,000 each, these things don't come cheap, and as they take quite a while to build, any damage to a car could mean one less for us to ride. Thankfully, the train car just hit a sand berm and nothing was broken. All good, except for one little detail: According to Bay City News, BART engineers don't know what caused the problem in the fist place. As a result, testing on the new car has been suspended until officials can determine the cause of the accident.
"Right now we're trying to figure out why it didn't stop, whether it was the train operator, a mechanical failure, or some combination of the two," BART spokesman Jim Allison told The Mercury News. Officials will look at data collected by the car's sensors in an attempt to figure it out.
”[The train] has been on BART property for less than a month, these are the kinds of tests we put them through,” Allison told BCN. As to the fact that officials don't know why it crashed? No worries, explained Allison — having these things happen now is kind of the point. “That’s why we have a test track that runs right into the sand, so you can do things like this and not have it get damaged.”
Officials hope to have an answer by the end of the week. Fingers crossed determining the cause of the crash is an easier nut to crack than what's been damaging the BART cars actually in service.
Previously: New BART Car Overshoots Test Track, Plows Into Dirt