More freaking delays this AM July 5

Defered maintenance. Whenever the management wants to save money that is always one of the ways they do it. They put off routine and preventative maintenance and instead fix it when it breaks. More hassle for the riders and front line employees but upper management sees that as fairly minor in comparisson to the money they save.

Balboa Park has two platforms, Daly City has three. there are track switches to cross trains to different tracks. Some of these could not be controlled.

For trains to run at high speed, they operate in what we call ATO (Automatic Train Operation) where everything is computer controlled. Signals get to the train via the tracks. In this area between Daly City and Balboa, there was something called a FO (False Occupancy) where the computer system "sees" something in the trackway ahead of where the train would move. Thus, the computer does not allow a train to move into an area where it believes the trackway to be occupied.

The switches are thrown manually, and the trains move through that area at a much reduced speed until clear of the bad area, at which point the train moved under computer control again.

Hope that explains things without getting into rocket science or seemingly condescending.