Tuesday, May 3, 2011

BART to Livermore a Horrible Idea

There I said it, BART to Livermore is a bad idea. Even if we could make the line downtown less expensive, it would still get minimal riders unless Livermore decided that they were going to make a massive push to make downtown an employment center. We know that's not going to happen, so we shouldn't even be building a BART line there. It's just not worth it.

That's not to say you shouldn't build transit, but if you want to spend 3 billion dollars to get 30,000 riders, why not build infill stations at 30th street and San Antonio? I bet that would cost less than a billion dollars. Then take the extra two billion that you would spend and put it towards a regional Geary Subway and second tube that would end up getting 100,000 riders a day and perhaps allow commuter rail lines from around the region to get into San Francisco's Transbay Terminal. You know, make it more Transbay than just bridge buses.

But it looks like we might not need to even try to kill this line, because the NIMBYs who only want a freeway alignment will do it for us. The only way that a line would have worked out there is if it picked up the employment centers and dense housing in Pleasanton and Livermore.

2 comments:

Brandon said...

I can only hope that once these wastes of money are done, we can finally expand BART in SF and put some infill stations in the East Bay by 2040.

david vartanoff said...

thanks for making the point. Several major sprawl inducing projects--Caldecott 4th Bore, all of the BART extensions/eBarts, the OAC--should be canceled. In SF the Central Subway should bne redesigned with full length platforms as a shallow tunnel for fast access/egress. We are squandering millions building bad designs.