Traction Power Substation Replacement at BART's San Leandro Station

The week of January 7, 2019, Bay Area Rapid Transit plans to temporarily close some parking spaces at the San Leandro Station while the agency works to replace the traction power substation located there. These spaces are located under the BART tracks on the north side of the station near Davis Street. The affected spaces are numbers 524-52 and 631-48 and will be posted with no parking signs 72 hours ahead of closure. The work will take approximately 14 months to complete. 

BART is installing a new traction power substations throughout the system as part of our Measure RR rebuilding efforts and strategies to increase capacity on the system. New substations, along with upgrades to our train control system and a new fleet of rail cars will allow BART to increase peak capacity by 30 percent through the Transbay Tube. While BART currently runs 24 trains per hour in each direction through the Transbay Tube, these planned improvements will enable BART to increase to 30 trains per hour.The new substations are part of the agencies effort to upgrade the whole power supply system (conduit, cables (34.5kv), and substations) with modern shielded cabling and new distribution hardware so the power can be properly stepped down and fed into the 1000-volt, electrified third rail. The third rail is what brings power to the train cars, via conductive metal collector shoes skimming along the third rail’s surface.