BART's Warm Springs extension to open March 25th

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-s-long-awaited-Warm-Springs-extension-to-10993146.php

by apsec112 • 9 years ago

58 51 9 years ago

dmnd• 9 years ago

The gleaming new glass and white-painted-steel station sat finished but empty, disconnected from the rest of the BART system. Nevertheless, it was staffed with five station agents, two janitors and a train controller because of a quirk in the way BART schedules workers.

idoh• 9 years ago

5.4 miles, $890,000,000.

theparanoid• 9 years ago

Puts the staffing quirk in perspective.

jeffdavis• 9 years ago

Do infrastructure projects in the US cost more, or am I imagining it? Is it proportional to what the local population can pay or something?

Anyone have an idea why or how it coild be fixed?

pkaye2• 9 years ago

About a mile of this is underground and went under a lake in Fremont. I don't know how much that adds to the cost of construction.

dekhn• 9 years ago

infrastructure projects in the US tend to be really expensive and prone to cost explosions. There are a number of reasons for this- for example, the design of the terminal is absurdly overly done for what it needs to be. Another issue is regulations- we tend to build things to an absurd level of regulations. ANother issue can be environmental restrictions (these added significantly to the cost of extending BART to SFO), which are often used as obstructions to development in the Bay Area.

pbreit• 9 years ago

I'm trying to think how such a quirk would be worded?

JamilD4• 9 years ago

The BART union contract only allows employees to bid on station postings twice a year.

donretag2• 9 years ago

If there is such a scheduling quirk, where schedules are determined in advance, why is overtime such an issue with BART? If they can allocate overtime at the last schedule because of a need for more resource, surely they can do the opposite. But of course, the real answer is: unions.

keithpeter• 9 years ago

Yes, that paragraph struck me as odd as well. I can handle the idea of a regular staff presence in an empty building to discourage vandalism &c but 5 staff on full time hours?

Then again, the two year extra salary cost as a percentage of the contract cost is probably below rounding error.

protomyth• 9 years ago

Valley Transportation Authority buses will not serve Warm Springs/South Fremont station

Is there a reason for this?

apsec112• 9 years ago

My guess is they're waiting on the Milpitas and Berryessa stations, which supposedly finish later this year.

ts4z2• 9 years ago

VTA serves Santa Clara County and the station is in Alameda County; and the next BART station will connect with VTA's light rail and be next to a large transportation center.

ZanyProgrammer4• 9 years ago

They have inter county busses, just see Fremont BART.

ZanyProgrammer4• 9 years ago

The 180 series of busses served/serve Fremont BART (haven't lived in the Bay Area for a year).

JamilD4• 9 years ago

The VTA is undergoing a complete overhaul of their bus schedules [0], in anticipation of the Milpitas and Berryessa BART station openings, which will happen later this year. After that, there'll be express buses from both stations to Downtown San Jose, and, of course, existing connections to light rail.

[0] http://nextnetwork.vta.org

m-j-fox3• 9 years ago

I often go to work at a lab that is as close to the Warm Springs BART station as any business could be, but I will still drive because walkability is so bad it will still be a 15 minute walk. Maybe someday they will build something near these East Bay BART stations.

JamilD4• 9 years ago

In Santa Clara County they have a pretty strong vision for more transit-oriented development, for the Milpitas and Berryessa Stations [0]. We'll see if that actually happens though, it seems like a lot of those East Bay stations are just meant to be driven to.

[0] http://www.vta.org/News-and-Media/Connect-with-VTA/Milpitas-...

kkylin2• 9 years ago

The Berryessa station, at least, should be bikable from a decently-sized residential area, not to mention reachable by light rail or bus. We'll see what people actually do.

closeparen2• 9 years ago

it seems like a lot of those East Bay stations are just meant to be driven to

BART is in a really incoherent place with respect to this. It definitely wants the number of station-accessible parking spaces to shrink, but its plans for the surrounding areas include basically everything except housing for BART commuters.

Offices, retail, housing for disabled homeless veterans, housing for seniors, housing for unemployed people, community centers, maker spaces for underrepresented groups, etc. Anything and everything but market rate housing.

A "transit village" plan was partly executed at Macarthur, except predictably, the market rate housing part fell through. Another "transit village" is going up on the parking lot at West Oakland (best station to drive to - sits on an underutilized freeway, parking still available at 9:30am in adjacent private lot, departures every couple minutes, and only 7 minutes to Embarcadero). The transit oriented development will include, again, everything but market rate housing.

Far as I can tell, BART is not trying to bring station users any closer, it just wants them to switch to bicycles. (Fuck that shit. Right before boarding a crowded train is the worst possible time to pedal a few miles uphill. I'll pay whatever it costs for the remaining privately owned parking, and when I can't, get out of this hellhole. I run 4 times a week, but it's sort of the whole point of civilization to me that exercise is decoupled from transportation).

ZanyProgrammer4• 9 years ago

There are houses that are less than a half mile from the platform, yet no one in their right mind would walk that. http://imgur.com/a/TUi8r

EDIT: I mean walk around under the Grimmer underpass, not dart across the freeway obviously.

narrator2• 9 years ago

That complete lack of walkability is some serious riff-raff proofing they're doing there. Can't have anyone without a car just wandering into a nearby pleasant little suburban cul-de-sac now can we? You see, lack of walkability is basically a strategy for keeping poor people out of nice areas. San Francisco is the exception to this rule because of the hills. Poor people don't like to walk up hills to go to the liquor store ergo nice houses can be near poor neighborhoods as long as they are sufficiently up hill.

pkaye2• 9 years ago

All that undeveloped land around the BART station will be high density housing btw. The work has already started.

rsync• 9 years ago

"but I will still drive because walkability is so bad it will still be a 15 minute walk."

Isn't a 15 minute walk the definition of walkable ? That's almost the perfect mix of time convenience and health benefits.

Perhaps all of the bad weather in Fremont tips the scales for you ?

m-j-fox3• 9 years ago

Fair. But the drive is about 15 minutes directly there. With Bart, drive + train + walk, it would be 45 minutes. It's really about total time.

ZanyProgrammer4• 9 years ago

People don't want to walk circuitous routes along really busy streets. And 15 minutes when its 90 out isn't fun either.

ben174• 9 years ago

It was great while it lasted. Living walking distance from Fremont station - end of the line - meant I could guarantee a seat on the train in the mornings. But now the train will be full by the time it gets to Fremont station if it is before 9am. On a positive note there will be far fewer people getting off at 5pm at the Fremont station and clogging up the escalators.

Stand on the right, walk on the left, people!!

emilyfm• 9 years ago

How high (long) are the escalators? Above 18.5 metres (60 feet in the US) it's more efficient to stand on both sides: http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/01/subway-escalator-stan...

donretag2• 9 years ago

It is more efficient on average, but those that want to walk will be slowed down, while those willing to stand will be faster since the overcrowding will be reduce. However, if those that are not in a hurry and are willing to stand, they should simply deal with the overcrowding.

Rapzid• 9 years ago

I commuted from Dublin. ~7AM is last parking spot and the trains were standing room only when they pulled out. Felt sorry for everyone that boarded between there and Embarcadero.

ulfw• 9 years ago

And yet they are still running trains from the 1970s which appear to not have been cleaned (let alone been renovated) since.

whoami2018• 9 years ago

They look like they haven't been, but they did get new seat covers over the last 2-3 years and they're getting new train cars.... any day now

BART's Warm Springs extension to open March 25th

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