More Rough Commutes Expected For BART Riders

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Commuters in the San Francisco Bay Area face another day of overcrowded trains and travel delays on Monday due to a mysterious electrical problem plaguing the region's rail transit system.

Bay Area Rapid Transit officials said 50 of their train cars were damaged by unexplained power surges on a section of track last week. The voltage spikes burn out critical components and took out another 80 BART cars in February in a different segment of the system.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports (http://bit.ly/1R8XW46 ) that though a few of those cars have been repaired, dozens of the system's 579 train cars remain out of service. The smaller fleet has made BART cars, which typically carry over 200 passengers during peak commute hours, even more crowded than usual.