The BART system meltdown Friday morning was one of a string of network failures going back two decades. Failures that at one point prompted the transit agency to promise a backup system designed to preserve train operations during a network failure.

That backup system, a BART board member acknowledged, was not in place early Friday morning when network equipment failed again, forcing a systemwide shutdown that lasted much of the morning.

Back in March of 2019 a network switch failed, forcing a similar shutdown of the transit system. Soon after that 2019 failure, BART promised that an emergency backup network system would be set up in a matter of months, according to a post from a top BART official that's still on the agency’s website today.

Tamar Allen, chief of BART maintenance and eng

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