Questions for you BART employees out there
There's been some discussion of the jam-packed Dublin-based trains in a few forums recently which has brought me to another set of questions:
I often hear/read that the system is running 53-56 trains. At an average of 7 cars -- that's 371 cars. How many operable cars does the agency currently have? Are there cars in a ``junk yard'' per se that are damaged beyond reasonable repair? Which yard are they parked at?
The rumors I've heard over the years suggest that BART is designed for about 400K-450K riders a day before they'd have to dump major dollars into system wide improvements. Is that a true statement? BART set ridership records last summer when we were bent over holding our ankles at the gas pump -- how busy *was* it? Although the Dublin line is the shortest *extension* -- it sounds like it is also the busiest -- I haven't seen standing room only trains by the second station on the Pittsburg line, ever. I can't remember how packed it was in the earlier part of the decade when I used the Fremont line -- and I've never rode the Richmond line in the morning.
I should have been more
I should have been more clear: is the system CAPABLE of running more trains down the dublin line? Is there enough CARS to support 10-car service on the Dublin line for every train during the rush hours?
Per Wikipedia Rolling
Per Wikipedia
Rolling stock
BART operates four types of cars, built from three separate orders, totaling 669 cars.
To run a typical peak morning commute, BART requires 579 cars. Of those, 541 are scheduled to be in active service; the other 38 are used to build up four spare trains (essential for maintaining on-time service). At any one time, the rest of the fleet of 669 cars is in for repair, maintenance, or some type of planned modification work.[14]
Yeah from their website: BART
Yeah from their website: BART has several types of revenue vehicles. In all, there are 137 A-Cars, 303 B-Cars, 150 C-Cars and 80 C2-Cars in the fleet.
I forgot to RTFM sorry.
Given the age of the cars,
Given the age of the cars, sometimes something breaks that is not in stock. So that car sits until the replacement part arrives. There are no "hangar queens" that are slowly picked apart for spare parts, every car is intended for eventual service.
Each yard has one or two in this category, if you look at a yard and see the same car in the same place for a few days, it's probably waiting for parts.
Cars go in for preventive maintenance every 500 to 900 hours, which can be as early as every six weeks,, if the car is in service all day long. Each PM cycle takes a crew of 4 or 5 mechanics and technicians 8 hours to perform. But there is a backlog and PM cars tend to stack up. In addition, regular maintenance on stuff that is broken gets postponed.
As far as scheduling for car availability, the present schedule is pretty bad. A slight tweak of a few minutes would free up a couple dozen cars. Plus, completing the west Dublin station frees another 8 cars.
An additional "source" of cars would be to increase the speed on some track sections and reduce running times (end-to-end). Of course, this would take some track maintenance, and the budget and the short time window when BART is closed prevents this right now.
Plus, completing the west
Plus, completing the west Dublin station frees another 8 cars.
How does adding another station free up cars?
I believe it has to do with
I believe it has to do with the single tracking they are doing right now through the area to finish the station. Trains have to wait at particular interlocks/stops for upwards of 10 minutes while another train clears the route. Once the single tracking is no longer necessary, trains wont be waiting for the single track, won't be delayed for their turnaround at Dublin, and won't require an extra train at Dublin to make the turn on-time. That is where the 8 cars will be freed up, I believe.
That's it exactly. In
That's it exactly. In theory, the single tracking could end before the station opens. There are a few large components (elevator, escalators) that have to be moved over the tracks, but once the sky bridges are open, pretty much everything and everyone can access the station by skybridge.