The country’s fifth largest commuter rail system often elicits grumbles from its riders for its chronically late arrivals, but that may change when the Bay Area Rapid Transit (or simply BART) system gets a much-needed software upgrade.
BART, which links San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland and other parts of the East Bay (along with portions of the Peninsula), will get an overdue software transfusion from none other than IBM, the San Jose Mercury News reports. That’s great news for commuters who are not only squeezed by rising gasoline prices but also can’t afford to be late in such a tight job market.
BART is in the process of updating the entire system, which moves 340,000 people a day on nearly 700 rail cars, according to the article. They’re spending $3.7 billion to replace the nearly 30-year-old cars and another $1.5 million to $1.7 million for IBM’s new Maximo software.
Maximo will help the train operators know the location and condition of all of BART’s cars, tracks, parts and equipment, and also will help them better manage maintenance and inventory. But for the hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents who use BART every day, officials say “consumers should see improved reliability of train cars, ticket machines and even escalators.”
Here’s a video promotion of the software:
So if you’re one late train away from losing that promotion, or worse, you can take some comfort in knowing that BART will be a more tightly run ship in the near future — in fact, the Taiwan High Speed Rail system enjoys a 99 percent on-time rate after installing the same software. The downside? You may lose an a convenient excuse for sleeping in too late.
Photo courtesy of Dennis Mojado, via Wikimedia Commons
