BART to fully retire legacy fleet next month with public ceremony
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Bay Area Rapid Transit will run its last train composed of rail cars belonging to its legacy fleet next month with a public ceremony to commemorate the occasion. On Monday, BART announced that it will fully retire its legacy trains from service on Saturday, April 1.
The transit agency will hold an event at Oakland’s MacArthur Station, “Riding into History: Final Run of the First Fleet” at 1 p.m. that day. Following the ceremony, the public will be able to board a legacy train and ride from MacArthur to Fremont Station.
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That ride will mirror the initial service BART provided when it launched on Sept. 11, 1972. The 45-minute trip, according to BART, will travel along 24 miles of the original section of track.
“These trains are part of the history of the Bay Area,” said BART General Manager Bob Powers. “While we are excited to modernize the system, we recognize the profound cultural importance of these cars, and we want to celebrate their rich history and give them a proper send off.”
BART’s legacy fleet has been serving Bay Area riders for more than 50 years. The Nixon-era trains are being phased out fully to make way for BART’s “Fleet of the Future.” The transit agency currently has 696 Fleet of the Future cars certified for service, 30 more than the legacy fleet inventory.
BART has a total of 701 of the new cars and an additional 20 cars a month are being delivered to the agency’s Hayward test track.
While legacy cars will no longer run in the BART system, three of them are being sent to the Western Railway Museum in Suisun City, where they will be put on display.
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