Final rail car of BART’s Fleet of the Future project ready for service

The final rail car from the original contract of Bay Area Rapid Transit’s (BART) Fleet of the Future project is ready for service. The project is now entering its second phase, which includes accepting cars from the second Core Capacity contract at the Hayward Test Track. The legacy fleet was retired in April.

“It’s remarkable how much the new cars have changed the look and feel of BART for the better,” said BART President Bevan Dufty. “These cars are delivering on the promise of being more reliable, more modern and easier to enter and exit.”

The agency says the increased pace in production and delivery of the new fleet has been essential to the transition. Car manufacturer Alstom is now delivering 20 cars a month to BART, almost twice as many as the 11 cars a month stipulated in the original delivery schedule.

According to BART, the quicker tempo of deliveries is one of the reasons the project is expected to come $394 million under budget. The agency says another cost-saving decision was having its own highly experienced staff do more of the engineering work in house. The project team, led by John Garnham, has included engineers who have successfully completed new rail car projects at other agencies.

With all 775 of the cars from the original contract now on board, BART is renewing its focus on the delivery and certification of an additional 306 rail cars for the Transbay Corridor Core Capacity Program (CCP), which will allow BART to operate up to 30 10-car trains per hour in each direction through the Transbay Tube.

An additional 48 cars, which will follow the 306 CCP cars, will serve Phase II of BART to Silicon Valley (BSVII) in the coming decades. The CCP cars and BSVII cars will bring BART’s total fleet to 1,129 rail cars.

“Getting to this transition point has been a true team effort,” said BART General Manager Bob Powers. “We’ve not only worked closely with the car maker to ensure the quality and reliability of the new cars, but we’ve created partnerships to make sure we have the funding to pay for these important investments.”

In addition to BART funds in the 775 Rail Car Project, many funding partners have made the project possible, including: