BART Welcomes You To San Francisco With Amazing Acceleration

Short Clips first; Enjoy the amazing acceleration =D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv2kkGKPO1U - BART: 10 Car Pittsburgh Baypoint Train Departing West Oakland Station
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VmAk5Dr0ZI - BART: 10 Car Pittsburgh Baypoint Train Departing West Oakland Station
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgJ9-R_Mpsc - BART 9 Car Fremont Train Arriving at West Oakland Station
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVR8dlPdeV0 - BART 6 Car Richmond to Fremont Train Departing from Union City Station
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfHUWlDN7w4 - 6 Car BART Train Arriving at Union City Station
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IsmaxOD-Uk - BART 9 Car and 8 Car Trains Arriving and Departing Union City Station

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snomwtbSHkg - 9 Car Fremont Bound BART Train Departing Union City Station

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktkL09Tk634 - Riding 9 Car Fremont train from Bay Fair to Union City. Nice AC propulsion sounds.

Final Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp6qjOIK_zM - BART Welcomes You On-board 10 Car Pittsburgh Baypoint Train from SFO to West Oakland Station

Riding BART is pretty bada**. I once heard there was a plan in place to replace Caltrain with BART-style trains. Being a fan of Metra, I was opposed, but after experiencing Caltrain and BART on the same weekend, I'm in favor. Caltrain is clunky and slow, while BART cooks. I wish our subways were like BART.

But Bart only goes to 1 of its airports, although I understand they're building a branch to go to the Oakland airport. Chicago already goes to 2 of its airports, 3 if you count South Bend Indiana airport too. Doesn't that make Chicago's trains better ?

Patrick Boylan wrote:But Bart only goes to 1 of its airports, although I understand they're building a branch to go to the Oakland airport. Chicago already goes to 2 of its airports, 3 if you count South Bend Indiana airport too. Doesn't that make Chicago's trains better ?

Chicago metro trains aren't nearly as fast as BART =P hehe. But I'm only judging by that criteria lol.

Fan Railer wrote:Chicago metro trains aren't nearly as fast as BART =P hehe. But I'm only judging by that criteria lol.

Really. Per Wiki:
Chicago metro has 224 miles of tracks with 146 stations, averaging 1.53 miles/station.
BART has 104 miles of tracks with 44 stations, averaging 2.36 miles/station.
With half again as much distance between stations, why are we so surprised to see the average speeds of BART trains being faster.
FYI, the maximum operating speeds of BART trains are 60 mph, while Metro trains are 55 mph. An advantage of just 5 mph isn't much to brag about.

Chicago has 4 track elevated to Howard, with locals that stop at every station and Evanston expresses that stop between every station, or certainly seemed to do when I rode Aug 2011.
BART has only a couple of short sections with more than 2 tracks.

electricron wrote:the maximum operating speeds of BART trains are 60 mph

Depends what you mean by maximum. Performance Level 1 is presumably the same 76 mph or so that it always was, but they almost never use that. So the usual maximum is somewhere around 66 mph.

timz wrote:

electricron wrote:the maximum operating speeds of BART trains are 60 mph

Depends what you mean by maximum. Performance Level 1 is presumably the same 76 mph or so that it always was, but they almost never use that. So the usual maximum is somewhere around 66 mph.

Yep. I haven't seen trains go above 68-69 in a long time. The fastest I've seen is 72. Regardless, it still operates faster than CTA and accelerates faster than CTA. Beats CTA in my book.

Yeah but Chicago runs better in the snow.

Patrick Boylan wrote:Yeah but Chicago runs better in the snow.

LOL can't exactly compare apples with oranges though. SF never gets snow, as far as I know. Not real snow at least . The real question here would be whether CTA runs better in snow than NYCT. But that would be straying of topic.......

As to acceleration, BART from SFO / sped up to 49 seconds - SFBART's blog contains some speeded-up video of BART at SFO and nearby.

The maximum speed that BART trains can run is 80mph. There was a time where that was a normal practice. However, due to wheel wear, trains don't typically operate over 70mph now.

Here is a video I found of a BART train reaching 68mph going through the Berkeley Hills Tunnel between Orinda and Rockridge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXlRtbnk ... re=related

Even in the Transbay Tube, trains now usually go only around 62mph compared to the 80 that they used to run.

On the cab speedometer, the red number is the maximum speed the train can run. The green number is the actual speed that the train is moving at.