SFO built the BART station at a cost of more than $200 million and pays $14.8 million annually for debt service on bonds sold to construct the station. BART pays SFO $2.5 million per year for rent on the BART station in the International Terminal, plus an additional $700,000 for custodial and electrical support services.Am I missing something here?
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The Story in a Story
BART pays RENT at the airport? Doesn't this sound like the SFPD taking liberties with Muni funding?
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7 comments:
Are you kidding me? That BART line is a subsidy to the airport, not the other way around. If anything, the airport should be paying BART for having located a station there.
So what happens if BART stops paying the rent?
IIRC cabs and buses also have to pay the airport for access. And in general it's not that unusual for airports to charge exorbitant fees because they don't want to be seen as subsidizing transit. At JFK the Port Authority charges $5 for a ride on the AirTrain from the subway, and at Newark there is a surcharge for using the airport station.
Sounds like SFO paid for the extension to be built, which would make sense that they charge BART for use of it.
Sounds like BART is actually getting a deal if SFO is paying $14+ million a year and bart only pays $2-3 million.
SFO didn't contribute substantial money to the airport extension, but Airports are money-making operations. SFO exists to make money for San Francisco. In this case by charging rent to BART and using it to (indirectly) subsidize the City of San Francisco's budget.
Other interesting ways that the city of San Francisco makes money by running the quarry in Sunol and developing sprawling offices and shopping centers in the Hacienda business park. Remember, San Francisco's green is as much PR as reality.
It's probably part of some complicated deal when the thing was built.
Perhaps BART could just decide to stop going to SFO and run all its trains to Millbrae, and end the "rental".
It looks like BART should be operated by the San Francisco Port Authorty (or whoever runs the airport), that way BART could have more money for its crazy extensions (I still have yet to see a proper BART line serving northern San Francisco and Marin County; I actually have one proposed).
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