Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Debris on track causing 30+ minutes delay

I was stuck in another long delay today. As soon as I approached that BART station, I knew it was bad news since a train was held there with the doors wide open.

Apparently, the delay was caused by debris on one of the tracks between Rockridge and Lafayette, thus trains were operating on one track only. I didn't think it would take that long, but a 15 minutes delay announcement turned into 30.

How long does it take to remove debris? Why does it take over 30 minutes? I'm sure there is a lot more work involved than I'm thinking of. Is it more than just getting a crew there to remove the coverboard or whatever it was out of the track and get the trains running normally again?

Needless to say, I was not in a chipper mood once I arrived at Civic Center station. I barely made the very last shuttle pick-up. However, I did see an adorable little pug being walked by his owner on the street today which cheered me up!!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was on that train, the operator didn't make any announcements for the first 30-minutes or so. She then finally came on after I called her on the intercom to ask her what was going on. Oh man was I mad!!!!

bartmusings said...

do you know how quickly the crew removed the debris?

i wonder where is the closest crew from the Lafayette station...probably in Concord? I guess that could take awhile for them to come, especially with traffic. I just wished they were better at updating us on what's going on and give us a more realistic timeframe.

Anonymous said...

I think this was complicated by the crew being tied up on another track problem, near Concord Yard.

That's a bummer that there were no announcements.

Anonymous said...

Unacceptable. You'll find this hard to believe, but call BART's Customer Service call center while it's happening and complain. The message will get to Central Control and they will call the Train Operator to encourage them to explain what's happening.