BART considers a later daily start during systemwide rebuild

Workers begin testing of the new BART cars, (right) along the test track at the BART maintenance complex, in Hayward, Ca. on Mon. April 3 2017. Workers begin testing of the new BART cars, (right) along the test track at the BART maintenance complex, in Hayward, Ca. on Mon. April 3 2017. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 17 Caption Close BART considers a later daily start during systemwide rebuild 1 / 17 Back to Gallery

Hundreds of early-morning BART riders will have to begin their commutes an hour later on weekdays — or resort to buses or their cars — as the transit agency struggles to keep up its aging infrastructure while undergoing a massive modernization.

With voters having approved Measure RR, a $3.5 billion bond, in November, BART has the money as well as the plans to rejuvenate the 45-year-old system. But it needs the time to do the double job of keeping the trains running while simultaneously working to rebuild the system.

The sooner BART can switch from its current 4 a.m. daily start time to a 5 a.m. opening, the better, a committee of BART directors said Tuesday.

“We don’t want to abandon riders, but there is no way we can inch our way” to a rebuilt system, said Director Lateefah Simon, explaining the need for additional maintenance time. “There are going to have to be sacrifices on the part of riders, on the part of employers,” she said.

BART officials were already working on plans to push back its systemwide opening hour from 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. starting in fall 2018 to accommodate the seismic retrofitting of the Transbay Tube. Now they’re toying with the idea of doing it sooner — perhaps late this year — to buy additional time for maintenance crews to do their work.

To take care of the estimated 2,400 commuters who ride BART during its first hour Monday through Friday, BART is discussing several plans to shuttle them in buses.

A systemwide late start would almost certainly make those predawn commuters cranky by forcing them to board buses or get behind the wheel and take to the highways, which are already getting increasingly crowded at 4 a.m. Recent Metropolitan Transportation Commission reports showed that traffic on the Bay Bridge during that hour was up 36 percent over the past two years with steep increases on the Richmond-San Rafael and San Mateo bridges as well.

On Tuesday, BART Director Joel Keller asked the transit agency’s staff to consider adopting the schedule change this year, but said it should be dependent on a plan to take care of displaced riders.

“We’re going to do it anyway for the Transbay Tube,” he said of the delayed opening. “So if we accelerate that by a year, how much more can we accomplish?”

BART’s Operations, Safety & Workforce Committee agreed that it was worth investigating. A transportation consultant, hired to study BART’s maintenance efforts, had told the committee that the transit system needed to make tough decisions and carve out more time for work crews to rebuild the aging infrastructure.

“BART needs to accept that it needs more time to maintain its system,” said Chris Wallgren, vice president of Transportation Resource Associates.

Unless it steps up its maintenance efforts, Wallgren told the committee, BART runs the risk of falling into a downward cycle of disrepair, decreasing reliability and declining ridership, he said.

The amount of time work crews currently have to perform system maintenance is restricted by BART’s two-track configuration, the limited number of places available for workers to get on and off the tracks and its 4 a.m.-to-midnight weekday operating hours, with the last train ending service after 1:30 a.m. Those factors leave crews just 45 to 90 minutes each weeknight for maintenance work, he said, and that’s not enough.

Weekend shutdowns, which BART has been using for the past two years, allow time for more substantial work such as replacing rails and crossover tracks, even though the shutdowns are also inconvenient for riders.

Paul Oversier, BART’s assistant general manager for operations, said it’s important for the board to continue to allow weekend closures and to look for other opportunities to find more of what he called “wrench time.”

“We are at a fork in the road, where we either get ahead of the curve or we fall behind the eight-ball,” Oversier said.

Other U.S. transit systems, including in New York and Washington, are in worse shape. Breakdowns on the New York subway in the past several months have riled riders and prompted Gov. Andrew Cuomo to declare a state of emergency. Transit officials, in response, accelerated maintenance efforts, even planning an 18-month shutdown of one line.

Fires, derailments and a variety of breakdowns on the system that serves the nation’s capital has forced extended shutdowns of parts of the Metro system and led to a sharp drop in ridership in the past couple of years.

Because of Measure RR, BART is on track to avoid such problems, said Wallgren, but more time has to be made for maintenance. However, it also means that riders wanting trains that run later into the early morning hours, at least on weekends, will have to wait.

“There is always pressure on us to stay open later and the answer has always been that to do that would compromise maintenance and the safety of the system. That’s still true,” Oversier said. “Late-night service is something that can be in BART’s future, but not until we get caught up with the (maintenance) needs we have now. And that’s going to take a while.”

How long? The rehabilitation plan outlined by Measure RR lasts 10 years.

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan