BART has set aside over $500,000 to fight citations for violations dating back to 2019, as Cal/OSHA considers fining the agency more than $200,000 over a 2024 incident where managers allowed employees to work on a live track, and BART is blaming the workers.
As NBC Bay Area’s Jaxon Van Derbeken reports, Cal/OSHA is considering hitting BART with more than $200,000 in new fines over alleged safety violations tied to track replacement work inside the Berkeley–Orinda Hills tunnel in November 2024, where crews were reportedly allowed to work on a live track without proper clearance.
Fortunately, no one was injured, unlike a deadly incident in 2013 in which two BART engineers were struck and killed by a train that was being operated by a trainee, as SFist reported at the time.
According to Cal/OSHA’s citation for the 2024 incident, one manager believed crews were permitted to perform track work without clearance, while another said he allowed the job to continue after workers told him they were “fine” with proceeding. In its appeal of the citation, BART argues the situation resulted from the “independent action” of unnamed employees.
BART employee Tony Velasquez, who spoke to NBC Bay Area about the incident, said he was in charge of a crew replacing a 40-foot section of corroded track beside the tunnel’s 1,000-volt third rail that day.
Velasquez said he followed BART protocol by requesting “safe clearance” from operations before work began, confirming the third rail was deactivated. Per NBC Bay Area, when operations told him there was a delay in granting clearance, he said he instructed the crew not to start work.
“I told everybody… on the job site that we don't have safe clearance, so no work,” he said.
But two workers later left with a pair of BART managers who had arrived at the site and began the job anyway, as NBC Bay Area reports. Velasquez said he was alarmed by management’s dismissive attitude following the potentially deadly incident.
“One of them just shrugged like, ‘I don't know,’” Velasquez said, referring to management. “Then I asked the other guy and he's like, ‘No, it's okay. We don't need safe clearance, we'll keep on working.’’’
Velasquez disputes BART’s claim that employees acted independently, noting the two managers who were present in the tunnel when the work proceeded, per NBC Bay Area.
“I knew that day when all that stuff happened, it was going to be a bad night and I knew that they were going to try to wash their hands and put the blame on us,” Velasquez said.
The agency has already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars challenging Cal/OSHA enforcement actions. As NBC Bay Area reports, BART’s governing board recently approved up to $150,000 more for the effort, bringing the total set aside for legal fights with the state worker safety agency to more than $500,000 since 2019.
BART said in a statement to NBC Bay Area that the citations are for an incident that “did not result in an accident or anyone being injured.”
“Cal/OSHA has previously brought citations against BART related to these same issues, and they were overturned in court,” said the agency. “BART likewise plans to appeal these latest citations.”
As SFist reported back in 2017, NBC Bay Area obtained footage of a deadly 2013 incident where two BART engineers, Laurence Daniels and Christopher Sheppard, were struck and killed by a rookie operator driving an empty train while other employees were on strike. The footage shows the operator’s trainer, who was supposed to be at the trainee’s side during the entirety of the trip, texting and talking on the phone in the passenger portion of the train leading up to the incident.
The trainer can be heard giving the trainee a hard time for “bothering” them with questions, joking, “How many more times are you going to make me get up. G**dammit?”
BART was ultimately fined $1.3 million in 2018 by the California Public Utilities Commission over the 2013 incident, as the Chronicle reported at the time. BART was required to pay half the fine at $650,000 up front, while the commission put the agency on a three-year probation, stipulating that BART must pay the remaining amount if any other safety violations occured in that time.
NBC Bay Area reports that OSHA investigators found no evidence of any employees receiving disciplinary action or being retrained following the 2024 incident. According to BART records, one of the managers involved received a promotion.
John Arantes, head of SEIU Local 1021, said it’s concerning that BART is choosing to stockpile funds for legal fees — while promoting managers accused of disregarding workers' safety — instead of addressing violations and enforcing protocols.
“It’s very scary now,” he told NBC Bay Area. “You never know if you're going to make it home or not, because you don't know if they're going to provide a safe work environment out there, or they're just going to put you in danger.”
Image: Pi.1415926535/Wikimedia
Related: 2 BART Workers Killed by Train
