HN Reader

Sooooo much snark, and so little interest into what BART actually runs on!

Originally, BART was a master stroke of digital integration in the 70's, and it's digital voices announcing the next trains were a thing of the future: An early accessibility feature before we even knew what those were, really.

Reading:

https://www.bart.gov/about/history

https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/traincontrol#:~:text=To%...

September 5, 2025, from late Thursday night into Friday morning caused by a server upgrade

On May 8, 2025, from late Thursday night into Friday morning caused by a server upgrade

On November 25, 2013, from late Thursday night into Friday morning caused by a server upgrade

https://web.archive.org/web/20131124212037/http://www.bart.g...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/us/bart-train-shutdown.ht...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/us/bart-transit-outage-ba...

I lived mostly car free in Atlanta because the Marta station is one flight of stairs down from the airport terminal, and I could get to my lab in GSU in downtown Atlanta in less than 30 minutes, midtown Georgia tech campus in similar time, my first apartment in Lindberg in 40 minutes, and my second apartment in Sandy Springs on the other side of the city in less than an hour from the airport. Commute to and from my school/lab/apartment was always under 30 minutes and always faster by train compared to car.

These days I fly to the bay area to my office in East Bay. It's 2+ hours commute from either SFO or even OAK because you need to change buses 2 or 3 times. Add 1 more if you count taking the airport shuttle to the BART station. And SJC does not even have a BART connection.

There's fundamental design flaw in public transportation in the US, they almost never connect the population centers. Part of the reason why people are discouraged from using them and they don't get the funding to stay up to date.

Broke the read-only Friday rule…

Are there any technical details yet? What was upgraded?

sorry using throwaway for this.

When GitHub was constantly failing, I finally got fed up and now I use my own private Gitea. It’s near-zero maintenance and has never had any unexpected downtime. Never looked back.

Stories like these make me feel the same way about California, which I called home for almost 20 years. So much to love, so many reasons never to live there again. Great place to visit when there’s not an active disaster unfolding.

Everyone here blaming BART and bureaucracy for being inefficient when in reality it's starved for funding due to our own voting (and zoning preventing housing/badly needed ridership near transit stops). Yes it's expensive to build transit just like it's expensive to build anything in America, which we should fix but that is not unique to BART.

It's quite possible the system will collapse next year if we don't pass increased taxes to fund it in 2026 https://www.bart.gov/about/financials/crisis.

Just last year we failed to pass a common sense bill to make it so we only need a 51% majority for transit bills in the future, indicative of how opposed we still are to transit in the Bay Area https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-proposi....

Not to mention the fact that Silicon Valley opted out of BART and chose car dependent sprawl instead.

So let's be clear, most of the issues with BART are due to anti-transit and suburban voters starving it of support.

I’m at a conference at Stanford University right now. I was going to take BART and the Dumbarton Express to avoid having to drive in traffic, but when I drove to the Dublin BART station, I found out BART wasn’t running. I ended up having to drive to Stanford, since the only public transportation over the hills separating Dublin/Pleasanton from the inner East Bay is the Altamont Commuter Express, which is much less convenient due to its few runs. Thankfully traffic wasn’t that bad today, but going home is going to be a traffic nightmare since it’s a Friday.

I wish there were more bus options that connected the outer East Bay (Dublin, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Walnut Creek, etc.) to the inner East Bay.

Incompetence. Someone should be fired for this.

Did the upgrade also break scrolling on their site?

I'm curious what percent of HN is based in the bay area for this to hit the front page so quickly. I suppose it could in part be that it was posted when people are commuting in?

Yeah the BART needs some love.

I mean despite it's history the snark is well deserved. With so many companies and people in the bay paying taxes, where the hell does all the money go?

Interesting, tidbit you added here. But snark is needed for this situation.

It'd be pretty cool if busses and trains were local-first.

Should have taken the car!

Works on my local environment <points to train set> choo choo

You'd think trains would use a rolling release

The cheap easy take: it's tragically ironic that the software running the infrastructure in Silicon Valley is such a problem

break things and don't move at all

edit: lmao, so many upvotes yet my comment has been moved so low. No more snark than a loving brother would provide. TY for your attention to this matter

[flagged]

Was this related to the CBTC rollout by any chance?

EDIT: It was not.

I’m not frustrated that this happened, I’m frustrated that it seems likely this won’t get better (witness their protracted incredibly high constructions costs that have not improved). I hope they prove me wrong.

Seems like BART should do these upgrades only at low traffic times, like overnight Saturday night.

Windows, upgrading again?

Public transportation is inherently centralized.

Cars are anti-fragile and decentralized.

Cars fail open in the short term.