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One of the worst things that can happen to daily commuters is when public transportation has delays – or a full-blown shutdown. On Friday, May 9, San Francisco’s BART announced a system-wide outage, causing a major disruption to travel and work. The problem happened in the early morning hours and continued throughout rush hour.
Below, get updates on the BART’s disruptive outage and find out if service is back up.
What Is the BART?
The Bay Area Rapid Transit system, a.k.a BART, is a system of 50 train stations in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. There are multiple routes available for riders, including the eBART and the Oakland Airport Connector. The BART is considered one of the busiest rapid transit systems in the U.S.
How Did the BART Shut Down?
BART shared in an X post (formerly Twitter) that the train system went down “due to a computer networking problem.”
According to NBC Bay Area, BART spokesperson Alicia Trost said that the control center was unable to restore the system after its shutdown. However, she noted that this issue “does happen from time to time” because “our system is over 50 years old.”
Service has been restored systemwide https://t.co/xMiQH0rwpV
— BART (@SFBART) May 9, 2025
“The good news is we’re in the process of replacing it, and we have the funding to do so because of Measure RR, and the federal government has made investments into our infrastructure,” Trost said, before adding, “But it’s awful news that the Bay Area can’t rely on BART as of this moment. We don’t have an ETA as to when the trains will go because part of that is identifying the location of the problem.”
Is the BART System Back Up and Running?
At the time of publication, yes — the BART is back up. Within hours of its system-wide outage, the company announced that service was restored. However, “major delays” were still a possibility.
“BART service has resumed system wide. Expect major delays in service toward all destinations due to an earlier train control problem,” BART tweeted.
