BART reduces rebuilding impacts on September weekends amid ridership increase
Construction teams have been making substantial progress on replacing vital track components in southern Alameda County. Work is continuing between the South Hayward and Union City stations, but BART is now able to cancel two track-shutdown weekends that had been planned for Labor Day weekend September 4-6 as well as September 18-19. The reduction in impacts on riders comes as BART’s weekend ridership has increased to as much as 40% of pre-pandemic levels. The change also is happening as BART offers a 50% discount on all Clipper BART fares in September.
Instead of multi-day track shutdowns that require riders to get off their train and take a bus through the impacted area, BART will reduce service to one track on Sunday, September 19 between South Hayward and Union City. Riders can expect delays of 15-20 minutes. The next track shutdown weekends for this project will now be October 2-3 and October 16-17. Free buses will replace trains on those weekends between South Hayward and Union City. Riders should add 20-25 minutes to their trips.
Additional shutdown weekends are expected for this construction project through fall in 2022 but specific dates have not yet been finalized. This is also the initial phase of work at the Hayward Maintenance Complex with additional stages of construction likely to occur over the next several years. The complex will eventually be a storage facility for hundreds of new Fleet of the Future cars.
BART is targeting stretches of trackway in the system that are in the greatest need of replacement and prioritizing work on those sections. This critical work is replacing nearly 50-year-old track infrastructure. Many of these aging track components have been in operation since the beginning of BART service in 1972 and have outlived their design lives. Funding for the track replacement work is coming from voter-approved Measure RR, which provides $3.5 billion for rebuilding the backbone of BART. You can learn more about the progress of BART’s rebuilding efforts by reading the latest RR Annual Report.