BART welcomes a new kind of train

The biggest thing to hit Antioch in some time was the arrival on Thursday of a spiffy new BART train that, like many BART trains, wasn’t running.

[...] BART was in a celebratory mood anyway, because the new test train for its perpetually under-construction Antioch line had arrived from the Swiss factory on time, and on-time arrivals for BART are not a sure thing.

BART directors and their invited guests — a congressman and a handful of mayors and county supervisors — were plenty excited just to walk through the new test train, listen to the whistle blow, and marvel at such features as windows and seats that have not yet been vandalized.

McNerney took a turn sitting in the operator’s seat, fingering the controls but taking care not to operate any levers than would propel the train westward through his district ahead of schedule, as there was a red railroad signal just ahead.

All along the Highway 4 median, where the extension will operate, workers continue to ready the track and the new stations at Antioch and Pittsburg Center.

When the $525 million extension finally opens, regular BART trains will make two stops at the Pittsburg/Bay Point Station — one stop at the existing platform and another stop at “platform 3” — some 100 yards to the east — where passengers will change to and from the Antioch extension trains.

Riders must push a button to enter or exit the cars, and some seats are accessible only by climbing steps at either end of the cars.

BART directors, once bitten and twice shy with the problems of their fleet of 44-year-old, once-revolutionary cars, elected to buy off-the-shelf transit cars from the Stadler company of Switzerland that have been used in many European and U.S. systems and have a proven track record.

Seven more trains — each consisting of two passenger cars and a shorter car in the middle that contains the diesel engine — are due to arrive by the end of the year.

Crunican did predict that the long-delayed Warm Springs extension — BART’s other big project, whose opening is 2½ years behind schedule — will open before the Antioch extension, whose opening is but two years behind schedule.