Develop Environmentally sound sustainable BART access policies

By Roy Nakadegawa

Suburbanite's Primary access (75-82%) to BART is via the auto while SF has only 54 of BART's 41,666 spaces, more suburban parking will create a greater inequity. Auto access is environmentally unsound and not sustainable.

Demand for parking is universal and more so in innercity. Over the years, more parking does little to improve our urban condition. A human scaled Transit Oriented Development minimizes the need for auto use and is more environmentally sound.

Last year BART experienced a 41,000+ daily ridership increase and the greatest increase from March 1999 to 2000, were as I suspected at stations without parking. Balboa Park had a daily rider increase of 1523 which was 3.6 times greater than West Pittsburg, the station where a BART Director is demanding more parking, had 420 increase. People getting to BP was via; 52% buses, 20% walk, 28% cars (kiss and ride), and 1% bike whereas WP was; 20% buses, 75% cars, 3% walk, 1% bike, and 1% other. Ranking increases of BART's 39 stations; *BP ranked - 6 , *16th & Mission -7, *24th & Mission - 8, **Dub/Plsntn - 10, **Fremont - 16, **Rich - 19, **Colma - 21, **WP -29 and N Concord (which still had unused parking spaces)-33.

• stations without parking, **terminal stations

Most BART type (Metro) systems around the world are primarily located in highly developed dense areas without parking. Typically these metro systems carry far more riders because of more offpeak mid-day and evening riders due to mixed use developments and residences around the stations. Their fares from high ridership is usually sufficient to offset the cost of operation and some even pay off part its capital cost. For BART, its capital cost is a 100% public subsidy and needs additional 35-40% subsidy for operation.

Parking provides a limited number of riders. More so with BART in that it is primarily used by commuters which limits further use rest of the day. Because of BART's sprawled surface parking with little nearby mixed development, more parking would not attract additional mid-day or evening riders due to lack of development that attracts riders.

There are other alternatives such as an exclusive busway costing far less than BART that can easily carry WP's ridership and parking is not be needed. Ottawa Canada has a busway that carries about twice the riders than BART's highest carrying WP/Colma line. In the AM, buses pick up riders in their neighborhood and when they reach the busway they all enter the busway and once on the busway they operate at less than a minute apart. Most buses operate as express and only stop to drop-off /pickup riders at downstream busway stations when flagged by riders waiting at stations, making it faster than BART.

Remember, older built up cities, for years, has had continual demands and more problems for parking. Often the problem is so grave that many think twice whether they should drive to go anywhere because places they go and also return from, they need to hunt around for places to park. In some cases they end up several blocks from their destinations. Still, more people are wanting to move into central cities and bidding up housing prices at a greater rate than suburbs.