Expect minimal late evening delays in 2021 for cable replacement in San Francisco

As we experience dramatically reduced ridership due to shelter-in-place orders, we are reducing hours of operation. This gives us the ability to do additional work on vital track and infrastructure projects in the off hours.

One such project is our replacement of the 34.5kV power cables that supply power to our trains. These cables have not been replaced since BART opened. We are currently replacing cables on our Downtown San Francisco line and have been doing most of the work late at night Monday-Saturday and on Sundays all day. 

On weekdays, we start the preparatory work of bringing in staff and materials around 9pm which means we start single tracking at that time which potentially may cause some delays of up to 10 minutes to the last few trains of the evening. This earlier start time is necessary for us to be ready to use the full window of time when we are closed. The extra time means, potentially, we will be able to “pull” 4 reels of cable instead of 1 per shift. That equals up to 9,200 linear feet of cable that can be installed each night. This could shave off up to a year of work affecting our customers from the six-year-long project
 
Check out our in-depth story and video about this project from 2020.