Memorial Day 2010 BART Closure Between Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill Stations from May 28-31, 2010

If you are planning to ride BART in the East Bay during the 2010 Memorial Day weekend of May 28-31, you should be prepared for a small delay. The train section track between Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill stations will be closed and not in use, though a bus bridge will be available for passengers.

According to the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) news release dated May 17, the BART train section between the East Bay cities of Pleasant Hill and Walnut Creek will be closed and not in use from the time period of 7:00 p.m. on Friday, May 28, 2010, until the end of the night on Monday, Memorial Day, May 31, 2010. Basically the train section will be out of use from Friday night until very late Monday night.

What is the reason for the closure? Basically, the reason is because BART has been working on the Central Contra Costa Crossover Project. This project is the building of crossover tracks that allow trains to cross over other tracks simultaneously or to prevent trains from being clogged on the tracks.

According to the Central Contra Costa Crossover Project web page, the goal of the project is to allow for nearly empty trains to make stops at stations before Concord or Pittsburg, thus allowing for the possibility of more trains to be run from Concord west to San Francisco or other parts of the Bay Area.

If you are not familiar with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) stations, please visit this link to view the BART train system. You will see that the Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill stations are in the northeast section of the BART system, and near the end of the line of the SFO Millbrae to Pittsburg Bay Point line, the system highlighted in yellow color on the BART map.

Note that this Memorial Day closure between the two stations does not mean you cannot get to your favorite Bay Area destination by BART during Memorial Day weekend 2010. There will be a free bus route provided by BART from and between the Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill BART stations. BART is hoping to have enough buses to meet every train so BART customers do not have to wait too long.

This Memorial Day 2010 BART closure from May 28-31 between the Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill stations will be an inconvenience, for sure, but the greater good is that when the Central Contra Costa Crossover Project, hopefully by the end of 2010, then East Bay BART riders will likely face far fewer delays on a regular basis then they ever faced before.

Also, after this project is completed, BART will have more options to quickly and conveniently re-route stalled trains that are causing delays in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. That is something that every commuter hopes to happen as soon as possible.

Sources

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Web site

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Press Release May 17, 2010

BART, Central Contra Costa Crossover Project