As part of the BART Earthquake Safety Program, Shimmick upgraded the 34.5-KV cabling system on BART’s routes through Oakland and Berkeley. Three phases of 250 MCM cable were installed between substations at the MacArthur, Ashby and Rockridge BART stations in a combination of raceways including pre-cast trench, splice-cable trays, 9,000 feet of 6-inch rigid galvanized conduit, 3,000 ft. of 6-inch phenolic conduit and 5,000 feet of concrete encased duct bank.
The new cable provided a new circuit between the existing substations connected through new AC switchgear sectionalizing stations to interconnect the three substations and provide redundancy to the AC power supply. The new circuit allow the BART trains to run even if an earthquake should cause one of the existing substations to lose power.
