All BART service through the Transbay Tube was halted Thursday afternoon due to a damaged gas pipe in West Oakland, and this is going to be a mess of a commute.
If you need to get home to the East Bay today via BART, I'd suggest grabbing an Uber or Lyft now, or getting in line for a bus at the temporary Transbay Terminal, because BART is currently in emergency mode. No trains are going in either direction through the Transbay Tube due to a damaged PG&E gas main near West Oakland station, as NBC Bay Area reports.
BART put out the service alert below via Twitter at 2:45 p.m., indicating that this was a precautionary measure, and there's been no damage to the tunnel or to the BART system.
BART has stopped service through the Transbay Tube after issue of a PG&E gas pipe near the Tube in west Oakland. At the behest of PG&E, we are temporarily stopping trains at West Oakland and Embarcadero.
— SFBART (@SFBART) June 6, 2019
This is a precautionary measure. There is no damage to the Transbay Tube. https://t.co/Oa60u70l2Z
Even if BART and PG&E were able to remedy the problem within the hour, that still puts us right in rush hour, and as every BART rider knows, even smaller issues than this can cause residual delays lasting hours.
As of 3 p.m., BART tweeted that service through the tube is "suspended until further notice," and they put out a "cheat sheet" for how to find an AC Transit bus in San Francisco.
Here are some cheat sheets to get from San Francisco to the East Bay without BART. pic.twitter.com/o39JwezUeg
— SFBART (@SFBART) June 6, 2019
Update: As of 3:35 p.m., the Transbay Tube reopened, according to a 511.org alert, but systemwide delays are expected to cause some havoc.
