BART Needs $2bn in Capital Improvements

With this weekend’s Substation Melt-Down at BART’s Hayward Yard Storage
Facility, the opening shot has been fired in next year’s Labor Negotiations and, more importantly, establishes the need for future fare increases.

BART Spokesperson, Linton Johnson, appeared on ABC 7 News at 11 PM, Saturday night, and offered this analysis of the situation:

“BART is definitely 35 years old.”

“This is equipment that is aging but is so essential to running the trains because it provides the power and we’re two billion dollars in need.”

“We need two billion dollars in capital money to replace these facilities otherwise they age and they blow up like that.” (clip03)

Re-watch any of this weekend’s news coverage of the fire and you’ll see melted Busbars and other severe damage to substation equipment. Simple fires do not melt Busbars which are designed to handle thousands of amperes of current.

The extent of the damage done to the equipment is indicative of a seriously high current overload.

Persons at the scene said that after the first fire was extinguished, backup equipment was energized causing a second electrical explosion and subsequent fires.

The multiple explosions and fires at Hayward Yard were not caused by BART simply getting older, as Johnson states, but were almost certainly caused by human error.

Johnson also used his airtime to say that BART needs to come up with $2bn in the next five to ten years to replace all the old cars because they’re “not worth maintaining.”

The London Underground, started in 1863, somehow manages to operate a system with 268 stations and over 253 miles of track using a mix of cars that are nearly 50 years old! How DO they do it?

With BART ridership expected to increase by 140,000 passengers in the next few years, Johnson says, “We need to have three doors on each side, versus the two doors we have on each side now, otherwise we’re just going to paralyze ourselves.” (clip06)

BART’s spin machine is definitely gearing-up to scare the public into
believing BART’s entire infrastructure is on the verge of collapse.

Too bad tens of millions of dollars were wasted on the failed “Advanced
Automatic Train Control” (AATC) system. That money could have been used for real improvements like carpets instead of rubber flooring or seat cleaning.

--TOD