Kids getting through the fence has been a huge problem to BART for decades.

Also throwing stolen grocery carts and bicycles over the side of overpasses. They get ground up under the trains, as does the undercarriage equipment, often disabling the trains. You would think that some kind of pilot or cow catcher might prevent this. but such a device would just cause the object to be wedged up against the third rail, tearing it all to hell in the processs. The third rail truly is a pain in the neck. I would like to see BART convert to overhead catenary, but there are issues with that as well, in BART's lower than low tunnels

Neighborhood gangs are notorious for cutting up BART fences. A few years back, in Hayward. a neighborhood gang was watched by neighbors cutting the BART fence up, making large openings in it, on both sides of the track. Unfortunately, no one called the police, or even BART, before a child from an adjacent school for retarded children managed to get on the tracks an get hit by a train.

A maintainer friend at BART tells of an incident where he came across two little boys and a girl, not a one of them more than six years old; playing with their blocks, stacking them up against the running rail next to the third rail; on the blind curve just south of the Concord Bart Yard. Fortunately, he had a radio with him; so all train service and the third rails were immediately shut down.

The really sickening part of this was the part their parents played in it. Seems there was a wide spot between the tracks and their property line fence. So they just "Appropriated" it as their own, planted a vegetable garden, and cut an unlockable gate in the fence. The kids told my friend that it was all "their property" and that the baby-sitter (13 years old) said the could play out there. He called the BART police, who remained on sight until the parents got home. He didn't know, but I would assume they were arrested for child endangerment. BART has since installed its own security fence right up again the neighbors fences.

Makes your hair stand on end !

OPB


OPB