BART Cancels Green Line Service on Four Weekends in August and September

BART will cancel Green Line service entirely on four weekends between mid-August and late September while crews replace an interlocking near Fremont Station. The affected dates are August 15 and 16, August 29 and 30, September 12 and 13, and September 26 and 27, according to BART. The East Bay Times and KALW have both carried the plan.

An interlocking is the set of switches that lets trains cross between tracks. Replacing the one near Fremont means no train service at all between Union City and Warm Springs/South Fremont on those weekends, and BART is taking the whole Green Line out of service to do it.

What it changes for San Francisco riders

The Green Line normally runs from Berryessa/North San Jose to Daly City, which means it passes through every downtown San Francisco station on Market Street plus 16th Street Mission, 24th Street Mission, Glen Park and Balboa Park. On the four work weekends those trains do not run.

The San Francisco stations themselves stay open and keep service. BART says the Blue, Red and Yellow lines all run their normal weekend service, and those three lines cover the same Market Street and Mission Street stops the Green Line uses. What changes is the one-seat ride: a trip from San Francisco toward Fremont or South Bay now needs a transfer, and the segment past Union City is a bus.

Riders coming north on the bus bridge and heading for San Francisco should transfer from an Orange Line train to a Blue Line Daly City train at Bay Fair Station, per BART’s instructions.

The rest of the plan

Free AC Transit buses will run between Union City, Fremont and Warm Springs/South Fremont, with both direct service and a hopper that also stops at Fremont. Fremont Station stays open for buses but has no trains. BART tells riders to expect 30 to 40 minutes of added travel time through the area.

An Orange Line train will loop between Warm Springs/South Fremont and Berryessa/North San Jose every 20 minutes, with northbound departures moved ten minutes earlier. The last two evening trips out of Berryessa/North San Jose, normally 11:40 p.m. and 11:50 p.m., are canceled on those weekends; the 11:26 p.m. train is the last one. Orange and Blue line trains will run eight cars instead of six.

BART noted in its announcement that scheduling the five work weekends was difficult because of the number of Bay Area events this time of year, including the FIFA World Cup.

Two other BART dates to know

Two other pieces of BART work bracket these weekends. Single-tracking between Millbrae, SFO and San Bruno runs from 9 p.m. Friday July 31 through midnight Sunday August 2, covered in our post on the SFO single-tracking weekend. The systemwide schedule change, with longer trains and reworked spacing, takes effect August 10, covered in our post on the August 10 schedule change.

BART keeps current work on its alerts and advisories page, and its trip planner has been updated for the work weekends.

Photo: Pi.1415926535, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.