Civic Center station in downtown San Francisco reopened Tuesday after an equipment problem on the trackway closed it for about an hour, BART officials said.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit District said BART police officers and repair crews were at the station.
The cause appeared to be an insulator in the trackway that “was blown and caused a lot of smoke to accumulate inside the station,” according to BART spokesperson Anna Duckworth. Riders were evacuated, and no injuries were reported, she said.
Officials said trains were single-tracking between the 24th St. Mission and Montgomery stations, leading to major delays.
Alberto Lopez, 60, said he was on Market Street and heard a “pop,” and the San Francisco Fire Department showed up about five minutes later.
“It wasn’t that loud, but you could hear a pop,” Lopez said.
Valentín Ramos, 66, said he saw white smoke coming out of the vents in the middle of Market Street near Seventh. It dissipated after two to three minutes. “There was a bunch of smoke,” he said.
The SFPD responded to a report of an electrical fire at 11:30 a.m. A BART inspector said someone threw “something big” on the third rail and “fried” its electrical insulation.
BART ridership has increased since the start of the year, but the agency has faced a run of equipment-related disruptions. The transit system shut down for several hours May 9 due to a train-control issue and computer networking problems.
A Clipper card outage July 1 cost multiple agencies as much as $650,000.
On Aug. 29, several Transbay Tube trains filled with smoke, panicking evening rush-hour commuters and interrupting service for several hours. Other multi-hour meltdowns followed in September and October.