BART NEARS THE END OF THE LONG HAUL

Bay Area Rapid Transit is striving for a reliability that will permit full-time operation. Problems are identified as train performance planned beyond physical limits and attempts to innovate in too many areas simultaneously without planning for adequate system performance when inevitable equipment failures occurred. Strengthened maintenance techniques and engineering efforts are improving car availability. Problems with the automatic train control have been compounded by the need to resignal the entire network for lower rates of deceleration than originally designed. The evolution of the automatic train protection system is described.