[OhioGuy]

Has BART's cutting-edge 1972 technology design come back to haunt it?
By Matthias Gafni, mgafni@bayareanewsgroup.com
POSTED: 03/25/2016 11:26:54 PM PDT | UPDATED: A DAY AGO

In 1972, President Richard Nixon sat in a brand-new BART car and took a quick trip from San Leandro to Lake Merritt. He commented on how the train reminded him of NASA.

He wasn't far off. The consultants who designed the gleaming new rapid transit system did, in fact, use principles developed for the aerospace industry rather than tried-and-true rail standards.

Cars were lighter, more aerodynamic and controlled almost entirely by an automated computer system. As Fortune magazine put it, the move was like going straight from a DC-3 to the 747 aircraft.

But did BART's ingenuity decades ago doom it for shutdowns such as the ones that have crippled the system in recent weeks? Or is the agency's problem typical of a 44-year-old system with infrastructure nearing or exceeding its life expectancy?

Experts say it's likely a bit of both. The Space Age innovations have made it more challenging for the transit agency to maintain the BART system from the beginning. Plus, the aging system was designed to move 100,000 people per week and now carries 430,000 a day, so the loss of even a single car gets magnified with crowded commutes, delays and bus bridges.