BART service resumed between the West Oakland and 24th Street BART stations on Thursday after an equipment problem shut down service during the morning commute and left large numbers of public transit riders were stranded.

Officials said riders should expect system-wide delays as service resumed around 9 a.m. Service was shut down for about 45 minutes due to what officials called a network engineering problem, forcing hundreds of riders to search for other ways to cross the bay, officials said.

Muni provided mutual aid through the downtown San Francisco station, BART spokesperson Michelle Robertson said.

During the stoppage, at the Lafayette station in the East Bay, a station agent repeatedly stopped riders from walking through the pay gates.

“No train to San Francisco! The tube is closed!” she yelled.

Trevor McCullough was waiting on the platform at El Cerrito Station for 15 minutes when he decided to give up.

“I’m just going to work from home,” he said, wheeling a small cargo bike through the bus concourse outside the station, as other passengers streamed out. Many anxiously checked their phones, some wearing defeated expressions.

Outside the 12th Street BART station, some commuters were coordinating Uber rides to San Francisco together.

“I’ll take another 50 minutes to get to the city, which is normally a 40 minute round trip,” said Ali Bergman, who was coming from Lafayette. This was the third time she experienced a technical delay this week, she said.

“I already consider it expensive and headache-inducing.”

Matthias Gafni and Janelle Bitker contributed to this report. 

This is a developing story. Check sfchronicle.com for updates.  

This article originally published at BART service between S.F., Oakland resumes after huge morning outage.