BART East Bay woes continue; Service disrupted between Concord and Walnut Creek

CONCORD -- Service between two of the busiest East Bay BART stations -- Concord and Walnut Creek -- was interrupted early Tuesday by an equipment problem.

Transit officials said the issue was "on the Antioch Line in the Antioch and SFO directions due to an equipment problem on the track and trains removed from service for an equipment problem."

Bus bridges were put in place to help the thousands of commuters who rely on the transit line. Bus service between Concord and Walnut Creek station was being provided by County Connection bus #14. Bus service between Pittsburg/ Baypoint and Concord station was  being provided by Tri-Delta bus #201.

BART officials said crews were working on a train routing problem. 

"One of the crossover tracks between Concord and Pleasant Hill is currently being manually maneuvered by the train operator," officials said in a voicemail. "We call it 'cranking a switch.' We also have trains with wheel flats from all the recent rain."  

At 7:24 a.m., transit officials tweeted they were diverting two trains to fill the yellow line holes and shorten the delays. 

"The train routing issue has stabilized," officials posted. "We are very sorry for the delays and working to improve service."  

It was the second day in a row for issues on the line. There was full shutdown of tracks between the Pleasant Hill and Rockridge stations that lasted about 30 minutes on Monday.

 At 10:22 a.m., BART put out a statement saying that all service between the two stations had stopped.

BART spokesman Jim Allison told the East Bay Times, the electric third rail suffered a brief interruption to its power. He said the issue was fixed within minutes but that the residual delays lingered longer.

The line serves trains going toward Antioch from San Francisco and going to San Francisco International Airport from Contra Costa County.