BART Back In Service After Derailment New Year's Day Between Orinda, Lafayette

ORINDA, CA — BART service was restored in the East Bay early Tuesday morning after the partial derailment Monday of a BART train between the Orinda and Lafayette stations.

Nine people were injured when an eastbound Yellow Line BART train derailed shortly after 9 a.m. Monday just outside the Orinda station. Two of eight cars on the Antioch-bound train derailed, erupting in smoke and flames.

All riders were safely evacuated and no major injuries were reported, although nine people were taken to area hospitals for evaluation, a BART spokesperson said.

The Orinda Fire Department responded and extinguished the flames. Contra Costa County Fire also responded, and BART sent extra personnel and police officers to the Orinda and Lafayette stations.

For the rest of the day Monday, there was no BART train service on the Yellow Line between Rockridge and Walnut Creek. People were encouraged to seek alternate means of transportation. Bus bridges were provided for passengers between the two stations in both directions and made all station stops.

No other BART lines were affected, however, there were impacts to traffic on nearby state Highway 24. Two eastbound lanes were shut down for nearly three hours Monday evening to accommodate a large crane that was brought in to move the derailed train back into place so it could be taken to the BART maintenance yard.

Around 7 p.m., BART announced the crane operator successfully re-railed both impacted cars, with the next step being to "couple the incident cars with others to tow them out of the way."

At that time, crews were already making repairs to damaged sections of the track. Inspections and repairs continued throughout the day Monday and overnight into Tuesday.

The California Public Utilities Commission was among the agencies that responded to Monday's derailment.

As to the cause of the derailment, a BART spokesperson made this statement: "Just prior to the derailment, the train operator was instructed by the Operations Control Center to manually align the route at the interlocking because a signaling issue prevented the computer from doing it. This procedure is not uncommon and train operators are trained to manually align routes. The operator then manually moved the train when it derailed. The train was not under automatic train control. The complete details into what happened are under investigation."

At 4:45 a.m. Tuesday, BART announced normal service was restored on the Yellow Line and the bus bridges were canceled.