BART shuts down transbay service after fire Gridlock: After fire halts transbay trains, BART tries for full service Friday

BART has shut down service between Oakland and San Francisco on Thursday morning because of this early morning fire near its tracks in West Oakland. BART has shut down service between Oakland and San Francisco on Thursday morning because of this early morning fire near its tracks in West Oakland. Photo: Graham Linn, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Graham Linn, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close BART shuts down transbay service after fire 1 / 7 Back to Gallery

BART's shutdown of the Transbay Tube most of Thursday was one of the longest closures ever, creating a hellish day for commuters that demonstrated the Bay Area's reliance on the rail transit system.

Limited service was restored at about 3:45 p.m. Thursday, and BART crews worked through the night to ensure that service would be fully restored for Friday's commute.

The trying day for people traveling between the East Bay and San Francisco started at about 2:15 a.m. when a blaze in a building under construction near the West Oakland Station damaged electrical and communications systems on the elevated BART tracks and forced the transit agency to cancel transbay service just hours before the start of the morning commute.

Before the fire was even put out, BART began contacting other transit agencies to accommodate the 110,000 passengers who would be stranded. While many riders stood for hours trying to get on an AC Transit bus or ferry to San Francisco, thousands of others turned the highways into parking lots. Transportation officials said their emergency plan worked, but also showed there is no replacement for BART's Transbay Tube.

"It goes to show you how important BART is to the Bay Area," said Randy Rentschler, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area's transportation planning agency. "Not just to the people who ride BART, but to people who drive, to everyone."

While AC Transit pressed 12 extra buses into service, and the Bay Area ferry system added four boats to its Oakland-Alameda route, it wasn't enough to make up for the loss of BART, which hauls as many commuters between the East Bay and San Francisco as the Bay Bridge carries.

Going to the game

Howard and Pamela Reynolds of Walnut Creek were intent on attending the afternoon Giants game at AT&T Park and walked about 40 minutes to catch a BART train. They then caught a bus from Oakland to San Francisco. Pamela Reynolds took a Muni train to the ballpark, and her husband walked.

They left home at 10 a.m. and got to the ballpark at 1:30 p.m., just in time to see the Astros' J.D. Martinez hit a grand slam in the third inning. The couple left the game in the eighth inning to wait for a ferry to Jack London Square in Oakland.

And after all that, Howard Reynolds remained upbeat and kept things in perspective. The 66-year-old Vietnam Army vet said, "At least no one was shooting at me. I'm still here."

While most people seemed to take the delays in stride, Roy Anten of Antioch said he saw plenty of rude behavior.

Anten had not heard about the fire when he arrived at the Pittsburg/Bay Point Station around 7 a.m. to commute to his job in San Francisco. His train went as far as Oakland's 12th Street Station, and he emerged to find about 1,000 people waiting at 12th and Broadway for buses going into San Francisco.

"They pushed a lady to the ground to get on the bus," said Anten, adding that he saw people offering rides into the city for as much as $30 a person.

Some annoyed commuters shouted at station agents and bus drivers, and many complained about what they saw as a lack of planning for emergencies.

A well-executed plan

But regional transportation officials say their contingency plan worked as well as could be expected.

Every six months, Bay Area transportation agencies meet for a disaster planning exercise, and one was scheduled for Thursday morning. But instead of pretending an earthquake had put the Bay Bridge out of service, as had been planned, the agencies coped with the shutdown of transbay BART service.

"It turned into the real thing," Rentschler said.

AC Transit, the East Bay's largest bus operator, doesn't have a huge fleet of extra buses or trained drivers standing by, but it diverted buses from other East Bay routes to pick up stranded BART passengers and made an 117 extra transbay trips Thursday.

The Water Emergency Transportation Authority, which operates the Alameda/Oakland and Alameda Harbor Bay ferries to San Francisco, ran service using six boats instead of the usual two to handle the large and unrelenting crowds.

Had the transbay shutdown lasted for several days, regional transportation officials would have implemented a plan to run more buses across the Bay Bridge, Rentschler said.

No comparison

Rentschler said the contingency plan worked well, with BART and the ferries providing some extra service, even on extremely short notice. But it's just not realistic, he said, to expect other transit operators to be able to make up for BART's absence.

During the morning commute, he said, BART carries roughly the same number of passengers as a six-lane freeway. A 10-car standing-room-only BART train can carry as many as 1,200 people, while a standard bus can haul maybe 60.

"You just can't replace that kind of capacity," Rentschler said.

Grace Crunican, BART's general manager, said it would be unrealistic, and not a popular investment, for BART to maintain an emergency bus fleet.

"It would be a tough budget decision to have 200 buses and 200 drivers standing by," she said.

The fire also points up the vulnerability of the BART system, which runs four lines through West Oakland and the Transbay Tube. But the only way to eliminate that weakness would be to build a new tube, which some have estimated would cost at least $10 billion.

Once fire investigators determine the cause of the fire and why it damaged BART, the transit agency will look into whether it should take new precautions. That could include asking cities to require only steel and concrete construction next to BART tracks or adding protective materials or structures along the rails.