Update as of 2:15 pm: A computer router failure caused yesterday’s BART shutdown. That’s according to BART spokesperson Linton Johnson. The routers send information about the trains from the side of the tracks to the central computer system. There are two routers and in the case of a failure, one is supposed to take over for the other. But both of them failed last night.
Johnson says BART officials are still looking for the root cause of the failure. But in the meantime they have backup computer staff on hand. And they know the interim fix for the problem if they both go down again.
Concept for new trains, courtesy of BART
Meanwhile... Monday evening's hour long outage of BART's control system generated a whole lot of anger online.
Perhaps it's good then that BART is actually readying itself for a big upgrade. This Thursday it's kicking off a series of open houses where you can look at the Fleet of the Future (see above).
But comfy seats aren't too helpful if there's no train to sit on. Did you get caught up in yesterday's outage? Searching "BART stuck" on storify shows plenty of 140 character glimpses into the outage.
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I definitely have a love/hate relationship with BART. Monday night, after working O/T,I get on BART to go home around 8:30 to find their central computer system is down and all trains at a stand still. They are suggesting passengers find alternate transportation!! I get home at 11:00!! Their slogan, "BART and you're there"...turned into "BART and you're stuck there."
It makes you wonder that if all those folks are on social media, couldn't they have fixed the whole problem of where the trains were with crowd sourcing? Who needs a master control... just have everyone on the train check in with their progress on foursquare or facebook.
And this is an unofficial add to BART's image, but the transit system has a new rap anthem. Forget shiny wheels. This video by East Bay duo Malki Means King and Juey Starberry sings the praises of pub transit and the electric third rail.
Rachel Dornhelm got her start in radio at WHYY. After anthropology graduate school, Rachel lived in Uzbekistan working with youth near the drying Aral Sea. Rachel returned to radio full-time in 2001. Her work has appeared on WNYC, WBUR, Marketplace, NPR news magazines and KQED.