Roll With Us: Train Car Electricians are the neurosurgeons of BART
BART is currently hiring for Train Car Electricians. Salaries start at $38 an hour and go up to $50 and include premier benefits. For more information, visit bart.gov/jobs and search for “Transit Vehicle Electronics Technician.”
To his coworkers at Concord Maintenance Yard, Michael Thomas is known for a peculiar habit: He likes to shimmy his shoulders as he measures voltage or repairs a vehicle’s electromechanical system.
Thomas is not a professional dancer; rather, he makes trains move as a Train Car Electrician at BART, where he’s worked for ten years.
As evidenced by his signature shimmy, Thomas brims with joy and laughter in his work. Train Car Electricians work on the “brains” – the electronics – of the vehicles. When a train car comes to the shop with a problem with its HVAC, propulsion, or lights, an electrician like Thomas will jump in to diagnose the issue and fix it. Everywhere he carries his handy multimeter, which measures voltage, current, and resistance, so he can diagnose issues on-the-fly and fix them. His goal? Keep the trains running and riders moving.
It’s hands-on, satisfying work that poses a new challenge each shift, Thomas said.
“A typical day at work is – we don’t really have a typical day,” he said. “Every day is different.”
Thomas’s path to BART twisted and turned like a mountain road. Before he worked on trains, Thomas served as a custodian at a mental institution. He sought a change. Thomas applied to multiple jobs at BART – “It’s BART, everybody wants to work at BART,” he said – and was hired as a train cleaner.
The program, a collaboration between BART management and our labor partners, provides free training to support train cleaners in becoming Train Car Electricians. He began taking classes at Diablo Valley College. Two years of hard work and study later, Thomas received an associate degree in electrical and electronics technology, completed 2,000 hours of on-the-job training, and successfully passed BART’s written test to become a Train Car Electrician. (To be hired, Train Car Electricians must have one year of verifiable experience in maintaining, troubleshooting, and repairing computerized, electronic, and electro-mechanical equipment.)
It was a joyous moment for the father of two, who takes great pride in his work keeping the Bay Area moving.
“The roof is the ceiling [at BART],” he said. “You can start at the lowest possible job and get to the highest-level job.”
Thomas said in his ten years at BART, he’s “learned more than I thought I’d ever learn.”
“We know a lot of people depend on BART, a lot of people are riding BART,” he said. “That’s why we come in and put the work in.”
To learn more about careers at BART – no shimmying required – visit bart.gov/jobs. Roll with us.