SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Approximately 200 people were stranded for nearly two hours inside a BART train in the Transbay Tube between the Embarcadero and West Oakland stations due to a power issue on Friday morning.
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The disabled westbound train has since returned to West Oakland and been removed from the tracks. Service has resumed in all directions however the incident has caused major delays throughout the system.
A passenger aboard the disabled train named Tasha told KCBS Radio the train left West Oakland shortly after 7:00 a.m. and once it entered the Transbay Tube – the underwater rail tunnel which connects San Francisco platforms with the East Bay platforms – the train slowed down and stopped.
"Sometimes that happens, but this time, we really stopped for a very long time," Tasha explained.
The train subsequently powered down and the conductor told the passengers that they had lost power.
"We were running off battery at first and then I'd say after an hour or so (the lights) went completely pitch black," Tasha said. "We lost battery power at that point. That's when they started throwing different plans out there of possibly getting off the train and walking to the tube to get out of there or waiting for a rescue train to come first, and then we would one at a time exit through the train track using the evacuation plan. Then all of the sudden the power came back on, an hour and 45 minutes later."
After regaining power, the train went in the reverse direction and arrived back to West Oakland, where the passengers were let off and officials removed it from the tracks. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of passengers were waiting at the station when the train finally came back.
BART Spokesperson Jim Allison told KCBS Radio that it was a problem with third rail power to one of the tracks in the tube that caused the train to stop.
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