What's Going On with the New BART Cars?

[likealady]

Originally Posted by DeanoSF

I work in Oakland and was in the 12th St. station talking to a BART janitor about the new train as it pulled away with "San Francisco" and "Not in Service" on its lighted sign.

He told me that there's something wrong with how the new train makes the turn into the Transbay Tube and it can't go to SF yet! He also said that there would be closures, like the one recently, to try to fix the problem, but to expect delays.

It seems strange and unbelievable to me, but his story has checked out so far...

PS--I went into the Embarcadero BART station today and on the escalator ride down, I noticed the entire line of 4 Muni trains waiting to load was brand new cars.

Well, that explains why I haven't seen them. I only ever take BART going into SF.

[TheseGoTo11]

Just rode my first one!

Yellow line from downtown to Lafayette. Big improvement!

[Creeping Incrementalism]

I happen to have some inside information on these cars. They are tremendously complicated and have a million bugs to be worked out. The conference calls between Chinese guys who designed the electronics, and French-speaking guys who designed the cars, are ridiculous as it is like they can't even speak English well enough to communicate with each other. And if they ever get the bugs worked out so the cars are reliable, then all the technicians will have to learn how to maintain a new fleet of cars. The old cars take someone about 2+ years to learn to work on competently, and the new ones are even more complicated. It sounds to me like a boondoggle and it will be years and years before the new cars are common.

In my opinion that's a good thing as the new cars have less seats. Sure three doors is nice, but I'd rather sit down near a door, or sit in the middle of the car & get up before the station and gradually work my way towards the doors.

[NW4me]

Originally Posted by TheseGoTo11

Just rode my first one!

Yellow line from downtown to Lafayette. Big improvement!

Yes, the new cars are traveling through the Transbay Tube now.