BART set to turn down the volume on screeching trains

Quieter BART trains are coming, BART engineers predicted on Wednesday, and the key is the simple trick of shaving about 2 millimeters of metal from the wheel of every car in the system. The new wheel design, which BART developed with computer models, could reduce noise by as much as 50 percent when the reconfigured trains begin rolling this fall, according to BART engineering manager Ben Holland. Holland is in charge of an ambitious project to regrind the wheels on all 669 cars in the transit agency’s fleet after models and tests revealed that doing so would lower noise by improving wheel-to-rail contact and by reducing the amount of track rippling, or corrugation, that BART cars cause when they roll down the track. The design has led to noticeably quieter operation on a prototype train that BART is running on a stretch of test track in Hayward, Holland said. Noise, Holland said, is major complaint from long-suffering BART patrons who were promised a “swift, virtually noiseless and vibration free” system in ballot language when BART originally won approval from voters in 1962. [...] construction on the Antioch eBART extension is ahead of schedule, and that diesel-powered line from Pittsburg to Antioch could premiere months earlier than the 2018 opening previously announced.