San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) announced it has completed construction on a new substation facility, the first since the system was built in the 1960s.
The traction power substation at Civic Center Station was energized in April, officials said and increases the amount of energy available to power BART trains by nearly 18 percent. As of 2024, 86 percent of BART’s contracted energy is greenhouse gas free.
“We haven’t done anything like this in the fifty-plus years since BART was constructed,” Myat San, Chief Infrastructure Delivery Officer, said. “We’ve replaced substations but never built a facility at an already-constructed station. This is a great feat.”
The energization of the substation will provide immediate benefits to BART riders in Downtown San Francisco, officials said.
“The substation increases reliability, redundancy, and operational flexibility, which are important for a system as large and complex as BART,” Javed Khan, BART’s group manager of capital projects said. “It also has modern features, including advanced monitoring and diagnostic capabilities.”
The improvements mean that if a problem does arise, BART and the Operations Control Center can identify and pinpoint it so technicians can be dispatched to repair it and restore power. BART can also source power from the new substation to keep trains running, officials said.
“BART’s improvements to station lighting and fare gates are very visible, but with substations, you don’t see the benefits with your own eyes,” San said. “But even if you don’t see these substations, you experience them. They are the unspoken heroes of the system.”