[HN Gopher] All BART trains were stopped due to 'computer networ...
___________________________________________________________________
All BART trains were stopped due to 'computer networking problem'
Author : ksajadi
Score : 158 points
Date : 2025-05-09 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kqed.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kqed.org)
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| I'm worried about BART. The new gate tap scanners work so poorly,
| somebody really screwed those up, and they haven't publicly
| explained what went wrong. I don't understand why the media
| doesn't cover this apparent bad screw up. There were a number of
| articles on the selection of the design and the planned rollout
| and the demonstrated susceptibility to ongoing fare evasion, but
| silence on the adverse impact on paying passengers.
|
| Every day the last week at my station there are piles of
| commuters held up by the semi-broken scanners. Kudos to the front
| line staff down there apologizing. I am not holding my breath
| it'll be fixed anytime soon.
| abeppu wrote:
| Yesterday I went through Glen Park Bart, and every one of the
| scanners had a taped-on hand-written note in sharpie that said
| "hold 4 seconds". I doubt that the taller gates will ever pay
| for themselves (I thought in general fare-enforcement costs
| meaningfully more than systems lose in evaded fares), but I
| _definitely_ don 't understand why we needed to "update" gates
| with scanners that are clearly worse.
| scarmig wrote:
| The gates are less about direct fare recovery and more about
| limiting the externalities that gate jumpers impose on other
| passengers. BART is definitely calmer and cleaner than it was
| a year ago.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The point of the new scanners is you can pay to ride with any
| payment instrument, not just a Clipper card.
| a_t48 wrote:
| Source on this?
| jeffbee wrote:
| https://www.futureofclipper.com/
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > (I thought in general fare-enforcement costs meaningfully
| more than systems lose in evaded fares)
|
| This is generally true for _active_ fare enforcement, since
| you have to pay employees to do enforcement, there 's appeals
| processes, and some people just don't pay the fine.
|
| If the new faregates result in some more people (lets say
| 1%!) paying for trips (less freeriding), that's directly 1-2
| million per year. If they _also_ increase real-ridership,
| that 's additional income. To make the cost back _quickly_
| you do need a significant increase (10-15%), that 's not
| totally out of the question, though it's probably not only
| due to faregates.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| It's interesting this is such a large problem there. In NYC,
| the tap-to-pay OMNY system is literally excellent. I swear it
| processes cards in a second or less and you save a lot of time
| by not buying a MetroCard. Are the BART scanners for some sort
| of RFID/NFC cards that are local to the train system, or do
| they accept credit/debit card payment? I'm curious how OMNY is
| so fast (compared to even going to a store and paying with tap
| to pay) and why BART is slow.
| trollbridge wrote:
| And OMNY will either accept a tap to pay credit card, a phone
| with tap to pay (including Apple's express card option, where
| it works even if your phone is dead), or a prepaid value
| dedicated OMNY card.
|
| It does not actually run the transaction through the entire
| way - if a transaction fails, the card info gets placed on a
| blacklist and that particular NFC device won't receive an
| instant authorisation next time. Generally speaking, people
| don't have an easy way to generate lots and lots of fake NFC
| devices, so this hasn't been a problem for widespread fraud
| (vs just jumping over the turnstile).
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| I don't know if this is the case with BART, but I've seen in
| my own local public transit network an incredible inability
| or lack of will to use systems proven in other areas. Instead
| of going with quick, proven, and reliable, systems, they'll
| default to going for the cheap option, which is usually slow,
| re-inventing the wheel, and unreliable. I visit a city like
| NYC or London or Tokyo and see a transit system with decades
| of accrued understanding, technical experience, and
| optimization. Then I come home and ride something shiny but
| slow, janky, and bug ridden.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| It works so well that I was severely confused the first time
| I used them, coming from the Bay Area. I spent ages trying to
| figure out how to instantiate and load a transit card into
| Google Wallet before realizing I could just tap any card I
| had.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| The Clipper cards used by BART are 90s technology that took
| so long to fully deploy that it was outdated by the time most
| people started using it. There was a brief window where if
| you were an early adopter it was better than what was
| available in many places (or not-so-brief compared to OMNY,
| which came along a decade later), but unsurprisingly the
| things designed later have mostly improved on it.
|
| The killer feature that also causes most of the quirks is
| that it can be used to make payments fully offline without
| allowing double-spending of balance. This is of course mostly
| a killer feature for transit operators rather than users.
| OMNY solves the same problem by just accepting that it'll
| occasionally permit free rides.
| jeffbee wrote:
| BART isn't the only agency suffering from those new readers.
| The problem is the vendor, Cubic. They supply this junk to many
| agencies.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I lived in DC for a few years before I moved to SF, spending a
| few years there as well. DC Metro is not perfect by any means,
| but I was really surprised at how much better transit was in
| the district than the bay area considering they have zero
| weather issues to contend with and are - ahem - home to a
| tremendous amount of technological talent.
|
| My personal observations are really that California are just
| truly fucking terrible at this sort of thing. Ironic
| considering they are such a huge economy and so wealthy. In
| northern California PCH (pacific coast highway) has been closed
| for over 15 months due to a rockslide. In southern california,
| a huge segment of ACH (angeles crest highway, one of my
| favorite places on earth) has been closed since 2023! You
| cannot drive from one end of the range to the other at this
| time.
|
| China would have fixed these issues in weeks. For all the cash
| and people they have, Cali really manages to drop the ball on
| these things constantly. Don't even get me started on high
| speed rail that was built out in the middle of buttfuck
| farmland from Madera to Shafter. Like a stairway to nowhere.
| Hilift wrote:
| DC Metro can use funds from developing property near Metro
| stations. This has been one of the positive things about
| Metro.
|
| The Purple line has evolved into a financial disaster. It
| will be the most expensive train line ever constructed, $10
| billion for a 16 mile segment.
|
| BART ridership is 40% of what it was in 2019. There's no way
| you can lose 60% of your customers and not have major
| problems.
| a_t48 wrote:
| IIRC it's the same sensors as the old ones
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| I have no idea and didn't comment on what the sensors are.
| Before the new gates, they worked. Now they only half work.
| fhkatari wrote:
| I used to live in Oakland, and am really sad to see continued
| failures of BART. They had started significant expansions right
| before the pandemic, allowing a long (but no traffic) ride
| possible from Oakland to San Jose. A key challenge for BART is
| that they depend a lot more on ticket sales than subsidies, and
| as a result, have been hit much harder with lower ridership.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| I'd say the BART administrators overpaying themselves is the
| bigger moneysink. Not to mention the spending 73M dollars to
| overhaul the gates to stop fare evaders, when it SHOULD just be
| free for bay area residents.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| The problem is that the Bay Area needs a single transit
| agency. All the agencies fighting each other for funding
| doesn't help. It's a much easier task to levy a minuscule tax
| on the entire region that pays for free public transit. If
| BART wants to do that at the moment, they can't.
| trollbridge wrote:
| I live in an area with a county-wide transit sales tax, and
| it just seems to result in them running a lot of empty
| buses around and building (and eventually abandoning)
| transit centres. Full price is $1.50 (which if paying cash
| means fiddling around with coins) except for the 50+ mile
| express routes which are $2.50.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Well you could be in the Bay Area where you'd have 27
| agencies, that still run a lot of empty routes and build
| useless and expensive transit centers, and then charge
| way more than what you have.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The MTC is that organization for the Bay Area.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Bay Area has 27 transit agencies and MTC has limited
| control over them beyond dictating how the state funds
| are allocated. Thats not what I'm talking about. What I'm
| suggesting is that the 27 agencies be one agency
| operationally and get funded as such. You'll have much
| better outcomes.
| jeffbee wrote:
| MTC is not just concerned with allocating state funds,
| though. They administer RM2 and RM3 and the AB1107 sales
| tax, and they put on a trench coat to act at BATA
| collecting and using bridge tolls.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| But unless MTC is concerned with the operations, you
| cannot have decent outcomes. If BART has an over reliance
| on fare but MUNI doesn't, a single agency would be better
| able to balance the budget. Similarly if one agency is
| spending more of the state funding on creating new routes
| while other is spending more on creating more frequent
| service on existing routes, MTC won't be able to direct
| what needs to happen. If BART is running more often, but
| the bus I take to the BART station just cut service, I'm
| not taking BART anymore.
|
| Point of a single agency is not just to collect taxes. It
| is to make sure there are better outcomes, so that when
| you do need more taxes to fund public transit, you don't
| get the pushback from the public.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I guess I just don't believe in your thesis that larger
| scale leads to better outcomes. Wouldn't we just end up
| with Caltrans Lite Edition, spending all the money on car
| junk? BART already has this problem, with two elected
| directors who are more likely the chew off their own legs
| than to ever ride BART.
| SllX wrote:
| > when it SHOULD just be free for bay area residents.
|
| Absolutely _not_.
| scarmig wrote:
| I think there should be options for low income residents to
| ride for free or heavily discounted rates (which exists
| now). But it's all about implementation: simply letting
| anyone jump on turns the system into a madhouse. Making
| sure everyone pays (even if through a government issued
| pass) and works with the system helps balance equity
| considerations with maintaining safety and cleanliness.
| SllX wrote:
| BART has several discounts:
| https://www.bart.gov/tickets/discounts
|
| Discounts are fine. Free riding isn't.
| edoceo wrote:
| Why is free public transport bad? Could get even more
| folk out of their cars, or expand employment
| opportunities.
| omnimus wrote:
| Because socialism.
| SllX wrote:
| I answered more thoroughly in response to your sibling
| comment.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| Because the tube will be filled with the unwashed masses
| ianburrell wrote:
| The price is not the barrier for most people using
| transit. The service reliability and availability is more
| important. Would you rather pay fare for frequent bus or
| wait around for free fares?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Because people are people. You won't be able to get on
| the train to commute when people are sleeping there.
|
| People don't value free things, and it's hard to plan
| things without pricing demand.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Because people in America have being taught to think that
| way. Plenty of countries run free (or near free) public
| transit just fine.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > Discounts are fine. Free riding isn't.
|
| Why not? Could you not make a pretty strong argument that
| avoided negative externalities (CO2 and air pollution
| from car engines and tires) make public transport
| worthwhile by itself, and just fund transport by taxing
| those (gas/cars)?
|
| Saves you all the infrastructure for billing/access
| control and some enforcement, too.
| SllX wrote:
| 1) it's a funding source for transit agencies which are
| already facing shortfalls and at the mercy of voters for
| any tax increases or bonds.
|
| 2) we want public transit to be exclusionary on a fee-
| basis to exclude people who generally will not be able to
| pay for it on their own in order to avoid tragedy of the
| commons situations which actually suppress ridership by
| people who can afford to pay the fee: vagrants, criminals
| and people who smoke crack on the trains.
|
| If you live in a region of the world that doesn't have
| these issues, great, do what you want. We're talking
| about the Bay Area specifically, and the thing keeping
| BART ridership down is that _people don't want to ride
| BART because it sucks_. The actual service is mostly
| fine. The issue lies in the people.
|
| I also have no interest in subsidizing the people I know
| can afford to pay. In the years prior to the new fare
| gates being installed, I could walk off MUNI and just
| casually catch every type of person from every type of
| walk of life, and by that I mean _mostly_ regular
| commuters with decent paying jobs, just casually free
| loading because they _could_.
| nartho wrote:
| >2) we want public transit to be exclusionary on a fee-
| basis to exclude people who generally will not be able to
| pay for it on their own in order to avoid tragedy of the
| commons situations which actually suppress ridership by
| people who can afford to pay the fee: vagrants, criminals
| and people who smoke crack on the trains.
|
| These demographics have no issue jumping the gates/going
| through with someone else, are already present, and will
| be whether the ride is $1 or $1000. You're just excluding
| the honest people who can't afford it. I also don't know
| what makes you think that criminals have to be poor and
| can't afford a ride.
|
| > I could walk off MUNI and just casually catch every
| type of person from every type of walk of life, and by
| that I mean mostly regular commuters with decent paying
| jobs, just casually free loading because they could.
|
| I'm envious of your ability to access people's bank
| accounts and occupations by looking at them.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Contrary to the popular belief, more ridership makes it
| more safe and less dangerous. Pretending that a fee
| excludes the less desirable is laughable. Plenty of
| people that you describe, ride the trains even now, they
| just don't pay the fee. By adding the fee you're mostly
| excluding the people who would ride it if it were free:
| law abiding people who work hard to provide for their
| families, but can't afford the fee.
|
| And as for funding shortfall, it's a self fulfilling
| prophecy. You don't fund transit, the agency needs to
| make cuts, making it less reliable, less safe and
| reducing capacity. Once that happens, even fewer people
| ride transit, creating even more funding deficits. This
| also increases the unwillingness of people to fund
| transit.
|
| We use similar funding structures for roads all the time.
| Everyone pays, and people who own cars get to drive to
| their suburbs 50 miles away from the city. I don't see
| people complaining about that at any point in time.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| >we want public transit to be exclusionary on a fee-basis
| to exclude people who generally will not be able to pay
| for it ...
|
| Public transit should be free (Or very inexpensive) to
| anyone who wants to use it. It's better for the
| environment, people's wallets, and the transit system
| itself if it was disconnected from ticket revenue. BART
| can certainly do more to enforce cleanliness and making
| sure no one is doing drugs on the trains, but that also
| requires more funding.
|
| >I also have no interest in subsidizing the people I know
| can afford to pay.
|
| Cars are subsidized endlessly via roads, associated
| maintenance, and parking on public property that could
| otherwise be used for something more productive. Many
| people with decent paying jobs own multiple cars banking
| on the fact that they can use public property to store
| their personal car, so they're also casually freeloading.
|
| Living in a car-dependent world significantly drives up
| housing costs for everyone in the region. Many of BART's
| stations are surrounded by and _zoned exclusively_ for
| single family homes with a lawn and a garage, which is
| ridiculous.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Because capitalistic incentives work. More riders = more
| money => incentive to get more riders. More riders = more
| cost/hassle => incentive to have fewer riders.
| tekno45 wrote:
| bart doesn't get to decide its free.
| jedberg wrote:
| > when it SHOULD just be free for bay area residents.
|
| There was a study done on this. It turns out that the median
| income of someone riding under the Bay Bridge in BART is
| _higher_ than someone driving a car across it.
|
| In other words the wealthier people are using BART. So if you
| made it free, you'd be subsidizing the wealthy.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| That's a very wrong conclusion to draw from the study. If
| median income of someone riding the bart is higher than
| someone driving, it could also mean that they drive because
| it is cheaper to do so. If you make it free, they would
| probably ride BART too, making it more accessible and
| equitable.
| jedberg wrote:
| The study was more in depth than that. It found that BART
| goes to more places that wealthy people go (financial
| district, SOMA, etc) than where poorer people need to go.
| xlbuttplug2 wrote:
| > sad to see continued failures of BART
|
| I think this is overstated, at least from an operations point
| of view. My mom has been using BART to commute to work for over
| a year and I can't recall many incidents like this.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| ever since I paid $8 for jumping in and out of a BART station
| b/c I meant to go into a Muni station... I lost all respect for
| them.
| xlbuttplug2 wrote:
| I too learned that the hard way when dropping a family member
| off. I naively assumed it wouldn't charge me if I tapped out
| at the same station 10 minutes later.
| ta1243 wrote:
| London Underground has nice clear policies around this,
| both about what you'll be charged
|
| https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/how-to-pay-and-where-to-buy-
| tickets...
|
| And about refunds (typically you'd get an automatic refund
| for a one-off event)
|
| https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/refunds-and-replacements/touched-
| in...
|
| I always have high levels of respect for companies with
| such clarity
| crote wrote:
| In The Netherlands you get a full refund if you tap out at
| the same station within 20 minutes. If you travel with NS
| (National Railways), you even have 60 minutes to tap out.
|
| Having someone pay just to wave off someone is incredibly
| customer-hostile. Besides, how many people are even
| committing fraud like that?
| Johnny555 wrote:
| This is pretty common among transit agencies, I got on the
| wrong platform in Japan once and couldn't get back out until
| I talked to a station agent, the fare gate gave an error and
| wouldn't open the gates. Not sure if that's better or worse
| behavior than charging a fare.
|
| It's called an "excursion fare", which is meant for those
| that just ride the train without getting off and come back to
| the same station. You can talk to a BART station agent
| (assuming you can find one) and they'll let you out, or call
| customer service and they'll reverse the charge.
|
| Modern fare systems should be able to figure out when you've
| exited right after entering and not charge you. BART is
| supposed to be adding a 30 minute grace period so if you go
| in and out of the station within 30 minutes, you won't be
| charged.
|
| https://www.bart.gov/guide/faq#3
| kelnos wrote:
| Heh, I was in Japan a few weeks ago, and had left my bag in
| a locker at a station (inside the fare gates). I went back
| to get it later in the day (when I could check into my
| hotel), and the station attendant charged me 150 yen just
| to go in to get it and come right back out!
|
| I get that they want to charge people who ride the trains
| for... fun?... and then get off at the same station, but it
| felt really silly.
| Symbiote wrote:
| [delayed]
| a_t48 wrote:
| You can talk with the clerk to get a refund. But I thought
| they were doing away with it entirely...
| impute wrote:
| You can also call them and get it refunded after the fact
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| Did they ever fix this as announced in 2022?
| https://sfist.com/2022/12/08/rejoice-bart-is-dumping-
| the-6-4...
| mogdance wrote:
| Oh! I thought they were going to get rid of that fee:
| https://sfist.com/2022/12/08/rejoice-bart-is-dumping-
| the-6-4...
| Lammy wrote:
| Fun fact: the reason it's like that is because both levels
| were envisioned for BART usage before the Peninsula lines got
| cut. In the original design both levels would have been the
| same fare area and you would have been able to walk between
| them instead of having to take the big escalators down to
| BART caged off from the Muni level. It's comical to watch one
| of the Muni trains crawl to one end of the giant platform
| that was sized for 10-car BART trains.
| kelnos wrote:
| Ah, I've always wondered why the Muni platforms (especially
| Powell) are so ridiculously long compared to the Muni
| trains themselves. Makes so much sense that they were
| originally designed for BART cars.
| Lammy wrote:
| And here's a citation -- Engineering Report: Rapid
| Transit for the San Francisco Bay Area, June, 1961: https
| ://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/50-years/1961-..
| .
|
| "The San Francisco Downtown element of the Bay Area
| regional rapid transit system consists of a four-track,
| two-level subway beneath Market Street and a two-track,
| single-level subway beneath Post Street."
|
| "At Montgomery Street, the Market Street subway joins the
| San Francisco approach to the Trans-Bay Tube. The subway
| extends up Market Street to about Van Ness Avenue where
| it swings lo the south to become the Peninsula Line in
| Mission Street. The lower level of the subway provides
| through regional service by joining the Peninsula and the
| Trans-Bay Lines. _The upper level is built to accommodate
| local rapid transit trains at a future time_ and will be
| utilized initially by the streetcars of the San Francisco
| Municipal Railway." (emphasis mine)
|
| And the flow map of estimated 1975 passenger counts makes
| it clear why they would want to double up on platform
| capacity along that stretch: https://www.bart.gov/sites/d
| efault/files/docs/50-years/1961-...
|
| Imagine if we got _this_ BART:
| https://i.imgur.com/hon9nEf.jpeg (1956)
| jerlam wrote:
| As an occasional BART rider, the changes they've made since the
| pandemic have been in the right direction. I'm mostly
| indifferent to the new trains and payment cards, but they've
| increased the frequency so that missing a train doesn't mean
| you can be waiting for over 30 minutes, which can be longer
| than your entire trip.
|
| The main problem which BART cannot fix is that the trains
| usually don't go to where you want to go.
| sagarm wrote:
| BART can fix that by building dense mixed use -- office,
| commercial, and residential -- around their stops.
| jyounker wrote:
| BART can't do that. The cities can do that.
| somanyphotons wrote:
| I think that's part of the problem, bart stations should
| be the centerpiece of a really dense (micro)neighbourhood
| pj_mukh wrote:
| They are doing that in East Bay [1] on BART owned land.
| They had been blocked so far by the most virulent NIMBY
| trash leading to some of the most scathing coverage [2].
| Most have been unblocked and are under construction. The
| one still being blocked is Ashby BART because of (say it
| with me folks), a "HIsToriC flEa MARkeT" (that mostly sells
| stolen goods)[3].
|
| [1]: https://www.bart.gov/about/business/tod
|
| [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/30/magazine/housing-
| berkeley...
|
| [3]: https://www.berkeleyside.org/2024/09/17/berkeley-
| ashby-bart-...
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It's not frequent though.
| andbberger wrote:
| BART's doing great. good headways, same schedule all day
| everyday. name another american transit agency doing a takt
| schoen wrote:
| > They had started significant expansions right before the
| pandemic, allowing a long (but no traffic) ride possible from
| Oakland to San Jose.
|
| They're still working on this, with four more stations planned
| beyond Berryessa (Little Portugal, Downtown San Jose, Diridon,
| and Santa Clara), plus an additional infill station on the
| Berryessa line. I think that would be really cool.
| Unfortunately it looks like this new extension won't be that
| competitive with Caltrain as a way to get to San Jose from San
| Francisco. Maybe at non-express times.
|
| Also, it looks like it won't be complete until 2040!?
| pm90 wrote:
| i mean yeah if you're in SF caltrain is super convenient, so
| its fine. Getting from oakland to south bay without a car was
| hell though. This line would make it so much better.
|
| Plus: Oakland is actually building homes for people while SF
| remains laughably behind on building quotas.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Otherwise known as the Worst Transit Project in the US [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZrrtF8Iy8k
| maldev wrote:
| I don't see how it ever comes back. You used to have business
| people and engineers riding the train. But with Covid the
| enforcement policies got really bad and the trains and
| atmosphere are so trashy now. It's far easier for the
| aforementioned group to just hire an Uber than deal with the
| crime and trashiness that's plaguing the system now.
| kpennell wrote:
| I ride the system all the time and I don't think it's trashy.
| Also there are the new gates all over that block people from
| jumping in as easily and that has been cut down quite a bit.
| I think it's tough for Bart to probably come back still
| because people don't need to be in downtown SF as much as
| they used to because a lot of people work from home now, but
| yeah I just don't think it's fair to say that the system is
| some trashy system. I think it's mostly pretty nice.
| Hilift wrote:
| BART is unfortunately doomed. It had been running on federal
| aid, and with a deficit. Ridership is down 60% from 2019 (50
| million vs 118 million). Now with San Francisco and Oakland in
| a long, slow downturn, it is unlikely to improve.
| scarmig wrote:
| I don't know the last time the entire BART system got shut down.
| There was a loud explosion earlier this morning, which may or may
| not be related, but there aren't any power outages.
|
| No information as to the actual cause right now. Easy to
| speculate that it's a cyberattack, but I'm going to go for the
| free square and wildly guess it is a DNS issue.
|
| Best wishes and godspeed to the folks who are working on fixing
| the issue, whatever it is.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| > wildly guess it is a DNS issue
|
| Riding around in Waymos here, in the Jaguar models there is a
| button on the console labeled "DNS" and I have no desire to
| grab the steering wheel or adjust any other control, except
| every time I climb in, I am sorely, sorely tempted to press
| this "DNS" button because (1) I do not know what it does and
| (2) I have always had a soft spot in my sysadmin's heart for
| DNS in particular.
|
| Please do not reply to tell me what "DNS" means in a motor
| vehicle, because you will ruin the mystique.
| scarmig wrote:
| Oh, that just updates the AAAA record for the Waymo. Totally
| harmless.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Do Not Slide. So just hit that if you lose traction, or if
| you're having a hard time getting your kid out of the park.
| dmoy wrote:
| Sorry I will ruin the mystique:
|
| It's Do Not Schedule, carry over from when there was a human
| behind the wheel.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't see any reason other than sheer speculation to suspect
| a cyberattack. It can just as easily have been some car crashed
| into a fiber optic thingy.
|
| The last time in recent memory there was a large BART
| disruption it had been caused by a motorcyclist who somehow
| flung himself over a fence into the trackway and died. That
| stopped service in and north of Oakland, which is more than
| half of the system by riders.
| scarmig wrote:
| All sheer speculation--the reference to cyberattack was from
| a now dead comment suggesting it was ransomware.
|
| It doesn't seem likely to be a physical obstruction on the
| tracks, though, as the entire system is down and trains
| aren't running anywhere. I don't know if that's happened
| before.
| culopatin wrote:
| I thought I heard that explosion and then just attributed it to
| a dream. Thanks for confirming
| throwup238 wrote:
| My free square is one of their control computers' parallel
| ports frying out and now they're unable to find a replacement
| because they buy them all as old stock off of ebay [1].
|
| The ports are used as hard realtime GPIO so if some of the
| electrical isolation failed downstream, it could take out the
| motherboard. Back before Vista's security model change, drivers
| could fill DMA buffers to the parallel ports controller and get
| hard realtime time outputs on Windows so there's a quite lot of
| old industrial control systems running on a thread.
|
| [1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/09/17/how-clever-
| mechanics-...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Forgive my arrogance, but nothing presented in that article
| should be such a big blocker. Spare parts for the traction
| gear sure, but none of the computing "problems" make any
| sense.
|
| It's not like hard real time systems aren't available. More
| concretely, they talk about running a DOS virtual machine on
| a laptop to download logs from the cars, but there's no way
| that protocol is so complicated it couldn't be re-implemented
| reasonably.
|
| This sounds more like "It's cheaper to just buy old stuff off
| ebay than it is to actually care about this system"
| jkingsman wrote:
| I'd wager it is technically a "cheaper" problem, but I'd
| also consider the axis that this is public transit, an
| industry known for being neglected budget-wise. Reverse
| engineering/reimplementation with competent parties may be
| laughably out of budget.
| analog31 wrote:
| Wow that takes me back. My graduate physics experiment ran on
| two MS-DOS computers with Turbo Pascal programs exercising
| the parallel ports. Each machine had a grotesque board that I
| made, with multiple ADC and DAC channels. I finished in 1993.
| By that time, of course, everything was obsolete, but I
| wasn't going to delay my project by upgrading.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > My free square is one of their control computers' parallel
| ports frying out and now they're unable to find a replacement
| because they buy them all as old stock off of ebay
|
| The last time I experienced a BART shutdown, the cause was
| that someone had found a box in one of the stations
| somewhere, and they (1) assumed it was a bomb; and (2) shut
| down the entire system. I'm not sure what stopping the trains
| while you investigate the bomb you've found accomplishes, but
| I don't think there were efforts to find additional bombs.
| (The box was not actually a bomb.)
| gouggoug wrote:
| > There was a loud explosion earlier this morning, which may or
| may not be related, but there aren't any power outages.
|
| Loud explosions happen all the time in SF. Particularly in the
| Lower Nob Hill / Tenderloin area.
|
| I lived an Lower Nob Hill for many years and heard countless
| explosions, most often in the middle of the night (2am-4am) or
| early hours (6am). Often times these explosions M80s-M1000s
| being dropped and detonated.
|
| Someone was arrested back in 2019 and the explosions reduced
| dramatically.
|
| This article[0] goes into detail about it.
|
| [0]: https://maxleanne.medium.com/tracking-san-franciscos-
| mythica...
| ujkhsjkdhf234 wrote:
| I took a trip to Europe last month and watching America fail at
| all manners of transportation is embarrassing
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Hey, at least we're ahead in self-driving cars!
|
| But yes, public transit in the states is rather pathetic.
| breakingcups wrote:
| They can even go through specially bored tunnels! Oh wait...
| spacemadness wrote:
| Trust me it's embarrassing for a lot of us that have traveled
| to countries with decent rail travel. Part of it is the
| shamelessness of the car industry for lobbying for decades to
| shackle everyone to a car. Now the car is an engrained part of
| American culture and makes our cities much more ugly,
| isolating, loud, and dangerous than they need be.
| pb7 wrote:
| You must not travel very often then. European public transit is
| extremely unreliable due to strikes. I, as a tourist, have been
| screwed over countless times having to pay $150 to take an Uber
| to an airport that is nowhere near the city it's meant to
| service. It's so unreliable that in some cities the brand new
| trains have displays that show which lines are currently having
| strikes. Now that's embarrassing.
| testfrequency wrote:
| You can just say Germany
| dang wrote:
| Ok, but please don't post flamebait, including nationalistic
| flamebait, to HN threads. It just leads to flamewar hell.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| neilv wrote:
| > _Due to a computer networking problem BART service is suspended
| system wide until further notice. Seek alternate means of
| transportation._
|
| That's worth a screenshot.
|
| Any idea whether the political and technical will is there, to
| post-mortem this, and make the system more robust and resilient?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Right now I am a subcontractor on a project to replace the
| Liebert unit in the server room that runs my metro area's transit
| system, my worst nightmare is my tech calling and telling me the
| servers are down, glad this isn't me!!
| notpushkin wrote:
| Now this could make a great anime episode.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43806281
| quotemstr wrote:
| Did they finally run out of old new stock 5.25-inch floppy disks?
| more_corn wrote:
| That was my guess.
| whalesalad wrote:
| it's always DNS
| gjvc wrote:
| I would like to find the person who started this stupid meme
| and shake them by the neck.
|
| The majority of times it's SSL.
| whalesalad wrote:
| to some extent SSL depends on DNS lol
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The network guys ducked up again.
| ashayh wrote:
| "Poorer" countries with a per-capita GDP that's 1/5th of Bay Area
| have exceptional public transport.
|
| How about fix the country public transport first instead of
| spending 2 Trillion on BS AI?
| sershe wrote:
| Very poor countries also have exceptional public water wells
| where people can draw water with buckets.
|
| That is because those are inconvenient, slow but necessary
| amenities in the areas where most people are poor. And that is
| why US currently doesn't need either.
|
| Source: lived in a poor country with exceptional public transit
| and didn't ever drive till 29; and carried water with buckets
| from a well only a block away for an aggregate of 1-2 years.
| estebank wrote:
| Equating having access to public transport with lack of
| running water is wild to me. A rich country is not one where
| poor people drive but rather one where rich people take
| public transport.
| sershe wrote:
| I'm not doing that. I am equating on a spectrum not being
| able to, as a society, afford running water infrastructure
| to not being able to afford cars and infrastructure.
|
| Note that this includes environmental arguments - saying
| that 8bil people cannot all live like people in Houston may
| be true but it's basically saying we cannot afford to have
| nice things.
|
| But the thing is US, and especially major cities, currently
| can afford them!
|
| Why would "rich people take public transit"? Except for
| extremely dense areas, driving is faster especially
| accounting for overhead; goes exactly where one needs, any
| time; and is way more comfortable. Only those who prefer
| extremely dense areas and also cannot live close to
| work/amenities (kind of the point of density) would want
| it.
| timewizard wrote:
| > A rich country is not one where poor people drive but
| rather one where rich people take public transport.
|
| You've mixed a subjective measure "rich country" with an
| objective one "rich people." I can't think of any situation
| where people of greater means accept more limitations.
|
| Anyways do you have any examples of "rich countries" that
| have solved this problem?
| danans wrote:
| > Anyways do you have any examples of "rich countries"
| that have solved this problem?
|
| Rich countries that have good public transit? Sure,
| that's easy.
|
| Denmark Singapore Japan Germany Switzerland France UK ...
|
| Here are some middle income countries that have good
| public transit also:
|
| China Spain Portugal Italy Taiwan
| timewizard wrote:
| Okay, so to come back to the goal posts, do "rich people"
| ride the public transit in those countries?
| Tactician_mark wrote:
| But rich cities can also have great public transit. New York,
| London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Singapore... in
| fact rich cities with transit as awful as the Bay Area seem
| to be the exception, not the rule
| a_t48 wrote:
| Once the initial shock of "how the hell do I get to work" wore
| off, it was nice taking the ferry and F to SOMA. Took an extra 20
| minutes, but better than the time it would have taken waiting in
| bridge traffic.
| satiated_grue wrote:
| Not quite but nearly totally unrelated, but I love that Debian
| ships a package of a PDP-8 PAL-like cross-assembler written at
| BART:
|
| https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/palbart
|
| http://www.pdp8online.com/ftp/software/palbart/
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Some system wouldn't power up this morning. System is back in
| service now, with major delays in all directions.
|
| https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/no-bart-trains-runnin...
| noitpmeder wrote:
| Their HQ lost power yesterday, maybe related?
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Due to human failure when operating computer systems*
| dang wrote:
| We changed the URL from https://www.bart.gov/ to an article that
| provides more information about what happened. See also:
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/bart-shut-down-t...
| (https://archive.ph/LnvJ1)
|
| https://sfstandard.com/2025/05/09/bart-service-shuts-down-co...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/us/bart-train-shutdown.ht...
| (https://web.archive.org/web/20250509152319/https://www.nytim...)
|
| https://abc7news.com/post/systemwide-bart-shutdown-due-train...
| OptionOfT wrote:
| That on its own is a farce. I shouldn't have to scroll down 2
| pages before I read about the current state / issues / how
| things are going.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| Most people I know wouldn't take Bart if it was free. Dirty,
| noisy, and unsafe. I can't imagine anything can be done to make
| Americans take trains at scale unless atleast the unsafe part is
| handled, and then the dirty part atleast.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-09 23:00 UTC)