How would you improve BART?

http://www.futurebart.org/

by Plasmoid • 12 years ago

29 48 12 years ago

xfour• 12 years ago

Scrolled down to not find, "Finish Bart to San Jose", or Connect to new 49ers stadium. I don't even live in the South Bay, and that seems like the most important project.

nilsimsa• 12 years ago

I think it is already in the plans to extend to San Jose and then to Santa Clara.

pstrateman2• 12 years ago

BART really should be a circle line around the bay.

alialkhatib• 12 years ago

I read somewhere that getting it to go through the Peninsula (with affluent homeowners fighting such construction) would be a non-starter. I don't recall how Caltrain factored in (it may be a little quieter but it's still certainly pretty loud and runs right through the Peninsula), but I suspect this is why they didn't bother to include that or other options extending service toward the South Bay.

ghshephard3• 12 years ago

Caltrain runs a screeching loud horn and rumbling noise everywhere it runs. I stayed at a hotel recently (Sequoia Inn, 526 El Camino) - and I was forced to use ear plugs to get any sleep while the Caltrain was running. And I'm a heavy sleeper.

pstrateman2• 12 years ago

If the tracks were deep underground it would be fine.

Of course that would be super expensive though.

bronson• 12 years ago

This is correct, the affluent communities have consistently shot Bart down. Caltrain is just as noisy but has the advantage of existing long before any of the housing tracts. San Francisco and San Jose Railroad service started in 1863.

autism_hurts• 12 years ago

Bart is supposed to be a figure 8 loop in the bay, or at least a full loop through San jose and up the peninsula.

The rich will never let this happen in Palo Alto, atherton, etc.

ghshephard3• 12 years ago

First thing I looked for was, "Bart around the Bay" - nothing there. It's beyond me why nobody has made getting Bart circling the bay a priority, and really is a blight on "Bay Area" transit.

1stranger• 12 years ago

It is, in a way. The current objective is to get BART to reach San Jose (and maybe Santa Clara) so that you can make a loop with Caltrain. It's hard to see BART ever replacing Caltrain (and eventually the high speed rail line) up the south bay/lower peninsula.

sparkman55• 12 years ago

Caltrain is already pretty good on the Peninsula. Since the various towns on the Peninsula were founded in the railroad era, the Caltrain stops conveniently in each downtown.

Where would a BART line run on the Peninsula? Down 101 from Millbrae? Such a route would cost billions over some of the most expensive real estate in the country, yet wouldn't serve the denser parts of the peninsula well.

Modernizing the Caltrain seems like a much better use of money. It's clear from the website that this stuff is very expensive!

If we want to dream, a BART extension from Milpitas through Santa Clara (and the new stadium) to link up with the light rail and Caltrain in downtown Mountain View would be awesome, though!

ak217• 12 years ago

Caltrain is not "already pretty good". It has antiquated, overweight trains due to federal requirements and the fact that it shares track with freight traffic. Those trains can't accelerate properly, so those "convenient" stops in each downtown mean the trains can't run with enough frequency. There are not enough trains and too many at grade crossings, which produce severe noise pollution (due to the federal horn sounding requirements).

Caltrain is WAY overdue for upgrades. The electrification project, which will solve some but not all of these problems, is in need of a speedup. Many at grade crossings need to be replaced with bridges (and some are being replaced), but because of all the fiefdom-like towns along the way, getting anything done along the right-of-way is a nightmare.

Although there is no tractable way to merge Caltrain with BART (because of BART's own foolish planning decisions, such as a custom gauge), and you're right that there is no space for a second right-of-way, there is another neglected project that would benefit here: Dumbarton Rail (http://www.bayrailalliance.org/dumbarton_rail). At various points it was suggested that either BART or Caltrain should be extended across that bridge - either way, completing that link would add badly needed capacity in a region that has long neglected its traffic infrastructure.

ghshephard3• 12 years ago

Caltrain is far from "pretty good" on the peninsula. It's passable for a few purposes only - commuter and event rail. (I.E. Getting people to the office in the morning, getting people people home at night, and likewise with sports events in AT&T stadium).

As a serviceable mass transit system, it's almost worthless. The trains come infrequently, and require really inefficient transfers in the city to BART if you want to travel from, say, Mountain View to Oakland.

I just came back from Singapore - and I was able to get almost any place in the country + a 5 minute cab ride the entire day using their MRT. I understand that Tokyo (and to some degree, New York) have similarly advanced transit systems.

I used Caltrain + Bart for about 15 years, but you really don't realize how bad Caltrain + BART are, until you travel somewhere that was a first class mass transit system.

chipsy2• 12 years ago

If HSR completes, we'll have faster Caltrain, which is probably Good Enough.

djcapelis3• 12 years ago

Santa Clara county voted not to be part of BART, so BART has no real authority to run transit there. It was supposed to be around the bay, it sucks. Talk to the voters in Santa Clara county! Put something on the ballot! Change it! Please!

(Santa Clara decided to spend that money on those silly expressways instead.)

steven20122• 12 years ago

Don't forget San Mateo County also voted to not have BART, due to their shortsighted belief that people from other counties would "steal" their jobs.

nsnick• 12 years ago

Actually, it is San Mateo County that is the real problem. Most of the people live in the East Bay and most of the jobs are in San Mateo County.

seanp2k2• 12 years ago

San Jose station and 24x7 service. Not having either of these makes BART nearly worthless to me. If they had these things, I would use BART probably a few times a week to go to SF from SJ. Right now, I drive instead (1x on average every other week) to night clubs / bars / dinner in SF / Berkeley. I can park at Millbrae and take BART into the city, but doing so is only useful if I'm going to be back before ~midnight.

Caltrain is not an option because the service isn't 24x7, it's terribly slow, the train doesn't come often enough, and the station isn't close to where I live. The last 2 are just personal annoyances, but I think the first 2 are enough to make it a much-less-desirable option vs driving for people who would otherwise take it. That the cars are ridiculously over-built because they technically share tracks with freight trains (from what I've read, this is also what makes them so horribly loud and inefficient [which also makes the system much more expensive to run]) and do lots of PR damage by having very loud horns (my speculation: is that also related to the shares-tracks-with-freight-trains thing?) are just rotten cherries on top.

Public transit isn't easy, but it's also not impossible. I know that even the Bay Area doesn't have the population density of places with their public transit

terinjokes• 12 years ago

The loud horn thing is a federal requirement because the tracks are at the same level (the same "grade") as roads and paths. One reason to support grade separation for Caltrain.

hueving2• 12 years ago

An express caltrain is faster than driving (unless you encounter no traffic, in which case the drive would be 9 mins faster) and you don't have to worry about parking. It's not quite as bad as you say. No 24/7 service is really annoying though.

swartkrans• 12 years ago

I'd really like to see Bart extend to Marin County. Like why isn't that even an option when a second transbay tube is? An extension to San Rafael, Marin City and maybe even Novato would be greatly appreciated.

blackjack48• 12 years ago

The anti-growth, Agenda 21 conspiracy theorist crowd is far too large in the North Bay. Instead, this is being built to go to the Larkspur Ferry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoma-Marin_Area_Rail_Transit

chipsy2• 12 years ago

FYI, former BART Director Robert S. Allen made Internet comments railing against transit-oriented development. [0] One of the underlying attitudes that drives today's transit situation is this notion of segregation via restricted transit access.

[0] http://systemicfailure.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/ex-bart-dire...

jesseendahl2• 12 years ago

Where is the option for "24 hour service on Fridays and Saturdays?"

djcapelis3• 12 years ago

"Second transbay tube" and "increased capacity in core" together allow 24/7 BART service. This is a commonly requested thing, and these are the things needed to make it happen.

jesseendahl2• 12 years ago

Just noticed that as well. Didn't realize hovering would reveal more info at first. Awesome!

hueving2• 12 years ago

Can you explain why more track is needed for a service that doesn't run 24/7 to allow it to run 24/7?

jaysonelliot• 12 years ago

These kind of pseudo-public-feedback surveys where the solutions available are presented as a limited set of options, all funneling towards what the agency wanted to do in the first place, really bug me.

You've got an entrenched bureaucracy that's paralyzed by a dysfunctional relationship with unions and a We've Always Done Things This Way™ mentality presenting what they think are the only options for fixing a system like BART.

Not one word about eliminating waste, improving efficiency, or innovation. Just a thinly-veiled complaint about budget shortfalls and an obvious plea for a sales tax increase to fill their coffers.

It would be wonderful if BART actually solicited public feedback on ways to improve the system. We're right in the middle of the most vibrant tech corridor in the nation, if not the world. You've got innovators and entrepreneurs that ride the system every day, many of whom would leap at the chance to fix an outdated, bureaucratic culture like the Bay Area Rapid Transit.

This is just an advocacy page for a bigger BART budget.

spikels• 12 years ago

All the choices offered are spend more or tax more. Haven't they been budgeting for the "$$$$$ $" in needed maintenance and repair all along? It appears that BART was never run to be sustainable but would require period bailouts to just survive. We can do better than this!

apsec112• 12 years ago

Where does all the money go? The Bay Area, and NYC even more so, spend far more than anywhere else in the world for an equivalent level of rail service. The "Central Subway" (only 2 km of tunnel!) will cost $1.6 billion; at the end of the day, that money is going into someone's pocket. Whose? As far as I can tell, nobody in local government has the foggiest idea - the contractors all hide what they're doing under a cloak of darkness. Maybe FOIA should be extended to private contractors for contracts over a certain amount.

aftbit• 12 years ago

This whole site feels like pure PR to me. BART wants the problems facing them to look huge, and their current funding sources to look massively insufficient.

jmspring• 12 years ago

Cut the pay to the BART board, do away with life time "free access" passes, and run for longer hours.

jessedhillon• 12 years ago

So assume there are 200 board members (a stupid number) each having their pay cut by $100k (another stupid number), and each of those have 5 passes for their family members who ride BART every day of the year from one end to the other (about a $10 ride) -- thats $20.365m. Where's the rest of the money going to come from?

ulfw• 12 years ago

Cleaning up and modernizing trains would be a big one for me. I rode BART again recently for the first time in 17 years and it looked, felt and smelled exactly the same as back in 1998. It's a disgrace for an Alpha-World City. A homeless person was driving back and forth, sleeping on the front seats. The seats and carpet were decades old. How hard can it be to at least modernize/clean the rolling stock, if you're not willing to invest in new ones?

sethhochberg• 12 years ago

They actually are investing in new ones.

http://www.bart.gov/about/projects/cars

erikpukinskis• 12 years ago

Bike cars with dedicated bike racks.

jamesli• 12 years ago

More parking capacity in the Bart station. A lot of people decide to drive to the city because they cannot find a parking space in some stations. It is not practical for them to walk or bike to the stations due to a variety of difficulties.

The extra parking space could be achieved either by converting the basic and space-inefficient one floor parking ramp to two floors, or building a new underground one.

benjiweber• 12 years ago

For reference here's some plans for the next few years of upgrades to the London Underground https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Q0FZUKHkY

tomlongson• 12 years ago

I would make single car trains that are built by tesla and go exactly where you need. Need to go directly to Fremont? Get on a train that is routed directly to your destination with other patrons from Embarcadero to Fremont. No unnecessary stops. This would require infrastructure for stations to include "offramps", but with a modular bus system (think uber), your ride would be available at the Fremont station waiting to take you the last few miles.

share1love• 12 years ago

BART will go to San Jose in 2018 paid for by Santa Clara County tax payers and federal funding. You would still have to take VTA's LRT to the 49ers stadium from the future Milpitas Station.

How would you improve BART?

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