BART woes continue as East Bay station stays closed

Transit officials said they haven’t pinpointed a “root cause” for a track power-surge problem that took out 50 BART cars last week north of the North Concord Station, causing them to cease train service between North Concord and Pittsburg-Bay Point to avoid damage to other trains.

The electrical spikes have been damaging the cars’ propulsion system, specifically causing a semiconductor device called a thyristor to fail.



Since Wednesday night, BART has provided bus service between the two stations.

The agency, however, is running a test train between the stations, periodically with riders to “see how the train cars operate through the area with riders on board,” said Alicia Trost, a spokeswoman for BART.