Sustainable developments at BART Stations

By Roy Nakadegawa

BART should jointly plan and develop Sustainable Transit Oriented Developments (TOD) with communities along its current and future R/W. TODs increases BART ridership and fare recovery with more off-peak riders (a time when BART has lots of capacity) as well as reduce auto use, energy use, air pollution and improve our urban and social condition.

Transit Oriented Development will generate more riders and improve overall operation and be a cost-effective asset. Recently we managed to develop a Strategic Plan for BART after months of input from Public and Community, Board, and Staff that emphasizes TODs as a strategic element for BART to pursue.

One major problem is that outside politicians wanting to gain public favor and satisfy the public's unfounded craving for rail are dictating where BART's future extensions will go (BART to Livermore, Antioch, and San Jose). They do this while unfamiliar with transit effectiveness, costs or alternatives and without much overall concern on cost-effectiveness and provide partial funding for BART extensions. They also disregard BART's Strategic Plan or the need for land use coordination with communities or without conducting a coordinated study with BART.

All these extensions if compared on the ridership basis will be at least 2.5 times more costly than the heavily criticized costly $5 Billion Los Angeles Metro Red line. Again, for BART to be more cost-effective, it needs communities to enact changes in their zoning and land use that incorporates TODs along proposed and existing BART routes to have the ridership densities that warrants BART. This is part of BART's strategy in BART's Strategic Plan. Generally for this high density corridor to develop it will take more than a decade so meanwhile an express bus or exclusive lane busway alternative should be considered along the projected BART route.