San Francisco Bay Area comes to a standstill as computer error shuts down entire BART train system

San Francisco Bay Area residents woke up to some bad news for their Friday commute.

Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, the region’s main commuter rail system, which connects San Francisco’s peninsula with the East and South Bay, systematically shut down due to a “computer networking problem” affecting train control.

The agency announced it was closing all 50 stations at 4:24 a.m. on Friday morning, the East Bay Times reported.

As of this writing on Friday morning, BART said that train service had resumed, although passengers should expect “major delays.”

“Technicians are on site trying to get to the bottom of the situation, but right now, that is the information that we have,” BART communication officer Cheryl Stalter told KQED shortly after 6 a.m local time. “We have a computer networking problem that is systemwide . . . it is affecting all operations, so we cannot put trains into service.”

Chris Filippi, a spokesman for BART, said in a statement to the New York Times, that the last time this happened, it took several hours to resolve.

The incident left tens of thousands of commuters looking for new ways to get to work, with many reportedly clogging the Bay Area’s freeways, while the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which operates Muni bus and rail services, assisted remaining passengers at some BART stations, per the Times.

The San Francisco Bay Ferry also ran larger ferries from the North and East Bay, per the East Bay Times.

Some 170,000 area residents use BART on weekdays, with ridership just half of what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the American Public Transportation Association, as reported by the New York Times.