New BART Train Car Crashes During Hayward Test Run
HAYWARD (CBS SF) -- One of the brand new BART cars that arrived just weeks ago crashed Friday afternoon during a test run in Hayward.
Footage from Chopper 5 taken around 4:30 p.m. showed the train car after it plowed into a sand pit designed to stop it in an emergency.
The incident happened on the BART test track near Industrial Boulevard that runs between the South Hayward station and the Union City station just before 2 p.m.
BART officials told KPIX 5 the train was moving at under ten miles an hour.
There were only one or two BART employees on board during the test run, officials said. No one was injured during the crash.
"Today we were testing our train operators and familiarizing the train operators with the new car," BART spokesman Taylor Huckabee said in a prepared statement. "It is not at all clear whether it was operator error or some other cause that caused the train to overshoot the end of the track."
At about 4:40 p.m., the car was pulled from the sand pit and slowly rolled away on the track.
The train car is part of what the agency called "the Fleet of the Future" when the car was showcased earlier in April.
BART has ordered 775 cars in total and expects to be rolling them out into service during the coming months.
