BART officials say they have started to implement a $4.3 million plan to limit the sudden braking glitch that hobbles cars on its new fleet in wet weather. It’s a plan that could take up to two years to roll out. But a fix can’t come soon enough for frustrated passengers. “You just sit there and wait — do nothing, go on your phone, play wordle, if you have to,” said rider Benjamin Brewster at the Walnut Creek BART station.  He says the wet-weather delays can last up to 20 minutes. “I just stay there, and the time keeps going up and up and up. It fluctuates. It can be pretty annoying.” “We’ve been looking for a way to fix this,” John Garnham, BART’s Fleet of the Future manager, told the board during a briefing in October. The problem, he said, is that the emergency braking system kicks on automatically when sensors on BART’s new fleet detect too much spinning or sliding of the wheels. “It slams on all the brakes,” he said. That braking grinds flat spots on all the wheels of entire trains, which then must go in to be resurfaced. BART internal reports, obtained under the Public Records Act, show BART engineers identified the risk of sudden braking nearly a decade ago, well before the first “Fleet of the Future” cars arrived.  In 2022, BART told regulators with the California Public Utilities Commission that cutting speeds in half to 30 miles per hour on wet days had “significantly decreased” the rate of so-called flats. Yet the problem has continued as more new fleet cars replaced the old, legacy trains, BART tracking data shows. November data shows BART losing an average of 14 cars per day during wet weather. The $8,000 repair cost per car is under warranty, for now.   BART’s $4.3 million plan involves reprogramming train software so cars will run slower only as they approach problem areas, instead of running half speed system wide.   “The train will know five seconds before it comes in there, or 6 seconds ….it will start to slow down early so it gives it a longer runway to meet the speed reductions, and it won’t slam on the brakes,” Garnham told the board. BART is still working out the details, including how much trains will have to slow to prevent the problem. BART declined to make Garnham available to answer questions about the new strategy, but officials have said the plan will take two years to implement. Still, one BART board member says she is not satisfied with just slowing down trains. “As an engineer you want to do preventive maintenance — you don’t want to see something like this — this is a clear failure,” BART director Liz Ames said. She says she is only learning details now about all the braking problems. She says even if the plan cuts flats by the 80 percent BART officials say is the goal, BART could still end up paying for extra repair costs after the warranty on the new cars expires.   “It’s just too costly to just let this keep going and then we may not have the warranty enforced,” she said. Ames wants BART to require a long term, permanent fix – like a reengineered braking system — and not just cut speeds. While waiting at the Walnut Creek station, Brewster says even with all the issues, he will remain loyal. “I love BART. I think it’s a good system. But also, I just hate the delays.”