Limited BART service resumes after hours-long systemwide outage

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — BART advised its riders to seek alternative forms of transportation as service across all lines was suspended Friday morning. Limited service within the East Bay has resumed as of 9:30 a.m., transit officials announced.

The systemwide suspension in service was due to a computer equipment problem that followed a network upgrade, according to the Bay Area Rapid Transit District. Officials announced the issue at 5:03 a.m. on social media.

In an update just before 9:30 a.m., BART said Yellow Line service is resuming from Antioch to 12th Street Oakland. Blue Line service is resuming from Dublin to MacArthur. Orange Line service is resuming from Berryessa to Richmond. The West Oakland station remains closed.

Service has not resumed through the Transbay Tube to and from San Francisco as of 9:30 a.m. There is no service in San Francisco or on the Peninsula at this time.

Commuters can use BART’s Trip Planner to find alternative transportation options, the agency said. AC Transit also has a website to find bus alternatives between BART stations in Alameda County.

“We do maintenance every night, whether it’s preventative maintenance or upgrading systems, doing software upgrades, doing track work,” BART spokesperson Alicia Trost told KRON4. “So every night this work happens and typically everything works fine and we’re able to get the service up and running. But this morning, we knew at around 4:30 a.m. that things were not working as usual from the operations control center.”

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) said some of its operators may be delayed Friday morning, which could impact routes. At 6:45 a.m., Muni said those impacts to its services “are minimal.”

SF Bay Ferry said in an advisory that it is adding an additional trip from Oakland to Downtown SF departing at 9:35 a.m. Ferry service operates on a first come, first served basis with trips costing $4.90 each way on most routes that serve downtown San Francisco.

The shutdown comes four months after BART’s last systemwide outage on May 9. On that day, all lines across the Bay Area were offline from the regular start of service until around 9 a.m. The root cause of the issue was later determined by the agency to be related to some of its network devices, which impacted the control center’s ability to monitor the activity of trains on the tracks.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.