BART Restores Service After Broken Rail Causes Major Delays

Updated, 1:15 p.m. Thursday: For what it's worth, here's BART's final update on Wednesday's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day (i.e., the broken rail that snarled service most of the day):

Crews successfully made a permanent fix last night to the damaged rail in between Civic Center and 16th Street Stations. There have been no problems with the new track and trains operated at full speed all morning.

BART has sent the broken piece of rail to a specialist for lab testing to help determine why it broke. The rail was not original rail from when the system was first built. It had been replaced in early 2011.

We want to once again apologize for the inconvenience this caused our passengers and we are thankful for the quick action of our crews who got the rail fixed before the evening commute. Safety is our top priority.

There will be no interviews today as there is nothing new to report beyond this information and what was shared yesterday.

Updated, 4:43 p.m. Wednesday: BART is back up and running, though some crowding continues in Market Street stations.

Updated, 3:40 p.m.: The repair has been completed and BART expects to restore service by 4 p.m. They say some delays will continue as the system catches up, but those should decrease by 5 p.m.

Updated, 3:00 p.m.: BART says that they expect to have service restored by 4 p.m., an improvement from an earlier announcement that things wouldn't be back to normal until 4:30 p.m.

A PG&E outage near the BayFair station is causing further delays throughout the East Bay.

Original Post:

BART crews are trying to repair a broken rail between the system's 16th Street/Mission and Civic Center stations in San Francisco, a problem that caused epic commute delays and crowding Wednesday morning.

The break prompted BART to shut down three of the four lines running between San Francisco and the East Bay. The one line that remained operational, the route from Pittsburg-Bay Point to San Francisco International Airport, is being single-tracked around the damaged rail.

BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said the agency expects delays "will bleed into the 5 p.m. hour," and she urged travelers to find alternate transportation. Later, the agency tweeted that repairs had started and the estimated time of service restoration is 4 p.m.

Trost said during a press conference outside the 16th Street station that a 10-inch piece of rail on eastbound tracks was reported broken about 9:20 a.m. after a train crossed the damaged area. Trost said an inspection crew found the broken piece of rail alongside the track.

Trost said at noon the repair itself would take about two hours to perform, but added the process of bringing equipment and materials to the repair site in the San Francisco tunnel and cleaning up the area after the work is finished would be more time-consuming.

The total time for getting the system up and running as normal could be five to six hours, she said. Until then, trains will be single-tracked on westbound rails through the affected stretch -- meaning long delays at least through mid-afternoon.

Trost urged travelers to avoid BART if possible Wednesday afternoon.

"The backup is ferries, AC Transit, buses, having people get picked up from work and taken home," Trost said during a press conference outside the 16th Street station. "So it's a situation where avoid BART for the next several hours."

With just one route running through the city from the East Bay, Trost said customers could expect at least 60-minute delays. She said the agency will take extraordinary measures to avoid overcrowding in its San Francisco stations.

"We'll have to make it that not everyone can go into the stations," Trost said. "We'll have to meter people into the stations.

Trost said it's not clear why the rail broke, adding that a visual inspection of all rails on the system's tracks is performed every night.

Here's the best of social media coverage of the delay: