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The Bay Area Rapid Transit system is a vital transportation link throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Riders average about 300,000 trips daily on BART’s 150-kilometer, 39-station system.
BART’s success in maintaining continuous service after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake confirmed the system’s importance as a transportation lifeline. However, while Loma Prieta’s epicenter was more than 80 kilometers south of San Francisco, the next big quake could be directly beneath a portion of the BART system.
To ensure that trains return to operation shortly after another big earthquake closer to home, BART directors in 2000 commissioned Bechtel to engineer a $1.3 billion seismic retrofit. The high-profile design and construction program, scheduled for completion in 2009, will upgrade BART from the Berkeley Hills Tunnel in Oakland to the Montgomery Street Station in San Francisco, including the underwater Transbay Tube that connects Oakland and San Francisco.
Bechtel has served as a partner in every major BART construction project. The company’s work to launch the system, which opened in 1972, received a dozen major engineering awards and inspired similar systems in Caracas, Venezuela; Washington, D.C.; and São Paulo, Brazil—all of which Bechtel helped build.
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