It took a while, but BART's "Fleet of the Future" is about to become, well, the train of today.
Back in March of 2016 the first new blue-and-white BART trains started making their way by flatbed truck from the factory in Plattsburgh, NY to the Bay Area to begin performance testing. The first cars arrived at BART's Hayward facility a month later. And the public got to look at the new train cars in October of 2016, when they were displayed at MacArthur Station in Oakland.
They were supposed to go into service several months ago. But thanks to delays and some problems clearing testing with state regulators, the trains haven't been available to the riding public...until now. From BART's release:
We've been given the go-ahead to put our new Fleet of the Future cars into service. That approval came from the California Public Utilities Commission Wednesday night after a comprehensive testing process. You can expect to see the first train in service as early as Friday afternoon. This is exciting news for BART and our riders as it allows us to move forward with replacing the oldest big-city fleet in the nation. The new cars will offer BART passengers a quieter and more comfortable ride while expanding our capacity. Perhaps you'll be one of the lucky ones to ride it. What a surprise it will be when it pulls up at the platform!
The new trains should be much quieter, with a more standard, conical wheel design that causes less friction between the wheels and the rails (in other words, it should eliminate the otherworldly howling noise from today's BART trains). The new cars should also mean fewer breakdowns and fewer of those maddening electrical faults.
Of course, the new trains are part of a system--and ongoing improvements to track-side electrical systems and rail replacement should make BART more robust and reliable (and did we mention quieter?). It will be years until the full contingent of 775 new cars is here and running, although now that state regulators have approved the first set, the rest of the batch will get into service much more quickly (in theory). Currently, BART has 10 more cars at its yard; once they're certified, they too will join the fleet for passenger service, according to the BART release. Additional cars will start being shipped from the factory in February.
"Thrilled that the first new BART cars will begin carrying BART riders tomorrow! Huge improvements in the new cars," wrote BART director Rebecca Saltzman, in yesterday's Facebook post about the news. "My favorite is three doors instead of two for quicker loading and spreading people throughout the cars."
If you get a chance to ride the new cars, please post about the experience. What do you like, what don't you like, and what would you like to see altered on future train orders?
