For the "pics or it didn't happen" crowd. pic.twitter.com/VpbknN5lWi
— SFBART (@SFBART) July 21, 2016
BART officials say the trouble began at 7:40 Wednesday night, when the driver of the truck you see above smashed through a trackside fence near the intersection of 4th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way in West Oakland, reports the Chron. The vehicle came to a stop on the tracks near Fifth and Jefferson streets, CBS 5 reports, right where trains enter the Transbay Tube.
BART immediately suspended service through the Tube and closed the West Oakland Station, urging riders to seek alternative means of transportation.
There is currently no service between SF and East Bay in either direction due to track obstruction. Pls seek alternative transportation.
— SFBART (@SFBART) July 21, 2016
While AC Transit was employed to move riders between's SF's Transbay Terminal and Oakland's 19th Street Station, riders complained that the buses ran too infrequently and that communication was poor.
@SFBART how about telling AC transit to send more NL busses more frequently than 1 per 30 minutes?
— Carlo Almendral (@Carlo2nd) July 21, 2016
"There were still people who could have got on the bus but they didn't allow anymore folks," one BART rider told the East Bay Times. "So now we're on the second bus. It took one person to tell this whole crowd to move them, to say the BART's up and running."
Over an hour after the crash, the truck remained, according to a tweet from BART.
Please be patient - a truck went through our fence and is on our tracks. We are towing it out now and inspecting the trackway. Apologies!
— SFBART (@SFBART) July 21, 2016
It wasn't until around 9:08 that the transit agency reopened the West Oakland station and travel through the Tube resumed.
Sigh of relief! The truck has been removed and trains are moving!
— SFBART (@SFBART) July 21, 2016
The East Bay Times reports that the errant truck driver, 38-year-old man, "was taken to the hospital as a precaution, then released to police around 10 p.m." He was booked into Santa Rita Jail in Dublin after he was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.