HAYWARD (BCN) — What exactly caused the new BART car undergoing testing at a facility in Hayward to crash at low speed into a sand berm on Friday remains unclear, but a team of engineers from BART and the manufacturer hope to have more answers by the end of this week, a BART spokesman said today.
The new cars, dubbed the “Fleet of the Future,” are slated to go into service by the end of this year and will replace the current BART carsby 2021. An initial car arrived last month and has been undergoing testing at BART’s Hayward maintenance complex.
During testing on Friday, the train overshot the end of a test track at about 1:55 p.m., going partially into a sand berm, BART officials said. The car was going less than 10 mph at the time.
BART spokesman Jim Allison said today that the agency is still trying to determine if the crash was caused by human error, mechanical failure or some combination of the two. A team of engineers expect to have a better idea by the end of this week.
The car did not sustain much damage, just some sand that had to be carefully cleaned out of some of the machinery and the wheels, Allison said.
But testing has been suspended for now while they determine the cause.”It has been on BART property for less than a month, these are the kinds of tests we put them through,” Allison said. “That’s why we have a test track that runs right into the sand, so you can do things like this and not have it get damaged.”