BART is currently experiencing system-wide delays today of at least 20 minutes resulting from some sort of widespread power loss, BART officials announced. Meanwhile, at least some passengers appear trapped on dark trains with no A/C.
We reached out to BART to inquire as to the cause of the outage, and spokesperson Taylor Huckaby informed SFist that "there was a power failure that affected the operations control center’s computers, which needed to be reset. There is no safety concern," he continued. "However, when electrical problems occur at the operations control center, it takes some time to reset the automatic train control system."
This is the first major system problem to hit BART since the widely reported delays and out-of-service trains caused by mysterious power spikes in March.
No word as to how many passengers are currently on dark, hot trains waiting for the system to reset.
@SFBARTalert we are stranded in a train. No lights. No air. No engine running. Shit is getting scary. What's up?
— Xande Macedo (@iamxande) May 18, 2016
Stuck on @SFBART with no power aka no air holy shit it's so hot
— eggslut (@allieav0cad0) May 18, 2016
Update: All BART trains are moving again according to Huckaby. SFist inquired if any of the trapped passengers had followed emergency evacuation procedures and exited the stopped train cars, but despite the hot temperatures it seems everyone kept their cool. "[No] one used emergency exits," explained Huckaby.
