Reliability improvement of BART vehicle train control

We report here the two-year effort of a task group to improve the reliability of the Bay Area Rapid Transit district´s vehicle-borne Automatic Train Control equipment. This effort included modifications to the train control equipment designed both by the manufacturer and by the task group. It also included the development and implementation of improved maintenance test procedures and equipment. A significant constraint on this effort was the need to maintain, and where necessary, improve the fail-safe nature of the train control system. Particular attention was paid to reducing the fraction of maintenance diagnoses which resulted in a No Trouble Found report; at the Start of the task-team effort, these represented half of the revenue service failures of this system. A substantial improvement in the maintenance capability and decrease in service failures has resulted from this effort.