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How fast does BART go?

The size of BART's fleet will be dynamic while new trains are put into service and old trains are retired. BART has 8 DMU train cars which each have a seating capacity of 104. 70 mph maximum; 35 mph average, including 20-second station stops. For BART to Antioch DMU trains, the maximum speed is 75 mph; 60 mph average.



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During peak commute times, over 28,000 passengers per hour travel through the tunnel with headways as short as 2.5 minutes. BART trains can reach their highest speeds in the tube, up to 80 miles per hour (129 km/h), although trains typically operate at 70 miles per hour (113 km/h) unless trying to recover from a delay.

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Berryessa/North San Jose to Embarcadero Station Taking BART, he noted, is also faster than driving the highly trafficked highways into San Francisco. “Being on BART makes me feel relieved. It's way more stressful driving,” he said.

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Q9: Will the new cars be faster? A: No. The new cars have a maximum speed of 80 miles per hour. To go faster than that, changes would need to be made, not only to the rail car propulsion systems, but also to other BART infrastructure.

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Q: Why doesn't BART run 24/7 or at least later on Friday and Saturday nights? A: The short window of time when BART isn't in operation is used for essential nightly track maintenance to help keep BART safe and reliable.

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Constructed in 57 sections, and reposing on the bay floor as deep as 135 feet beneath the surface, the remarkable $180 million structure took six years of toil and seismic studies to design, and less than three years to contract.

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BART actually has a big machine that grinds down the bumps on corrugated track, eliminating some of the noise. This explains why sometimes a portion of the BART system makes loud uuunnnhhh sounds one day and doesn't make a peep the next. You aren't crazy -- they just smoothed out the track at night.

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Earthquake Safety Program The Transbay Tube is BART's most critical asset. Although the tube is structurally sound, in a very large and very rare earthquake, the outer shell and concrete liner are predicted to crack.

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The Transbay Tube is an underwater rail tunnel that carries Bay Area Rapid Transit's four transbay lines under San Francisco Bay between the cities of San Francisco and Oakland in California. The tube is 3.6 miles (5.8 km) long, and attaches to twin bored tunnels.

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Seats are scrubbed with hot water and disinfectant soap during a thorough clean. BART recently increased the frequency of thorough cleans from every 900 hours of train car service to every 450 hours, meaning we've doubled the number of times the cars in our system undergo a deep clean.

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Like most trains, BART wheels are tied together with rigid axels and no differentials. This means the wheels always rotate at the same speed, even around corners. Because the inner radius is smaller, there is less distance to travel, which can cause a slippage between the wheels and track, which is noisy.

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Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) uses 5'6” Indian gauge as the rule of thumb is that a wider gauge means greater stability, with BART expecting to be the most advanced rail system in the county at the time of its conception.

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Transit Saves You Money The average BART fare is approximately $3.96. For the same price as one year of car ownership, you could take nearly 3,000 average trips on BART – or about seven trips a day. Use our Fare Calculator to determine the exact cost of your trip.

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BART plans to launch the Fleet of the Future trains using eight-car and six-car trains but will adjust as ridership grows. Running trains with fewer cars will allow the BART Police Department (PD) to increase its visibility on trains and platforms while using the same number of staff.

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BART will realize cost savings and efficiency gains through this change. BART is expected to save about $12 million annually through reduced power consumption and cars logging fewer operating hours.

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