Fantasy BART (Oakland, Alameda, Orinda: train, ferries, station)

[Gentoo]

Originally Posted by wazmoot

Why, o why isn't there an "iron horse" BART line between, say, Dublin/Pleasanton and Walnut Creek? Seems like there would be enough demand.

give 'em time. The Dublin/Pleasanton line is still relatively new.

[04kL4nD]

Not going to happen.

Rich, white conservatives are terrified of minorities and public transit. They will cry NIMBY all day long

[sav858]

Originally Posted by wazmoot

Why, o why isn't there an "iron horse" BART line between, say, Dublin/Pleasanton and Walnut Creek? Seems like there would be enough demand.

There isn't, especially for a BART line. All the job centers along that corridor are in suburban office parks anyways, making driving much more feasible.

[jade408]

Originally Posted by sav858

There isn't, especially for a BART line. All the job centers along that corridor are in suburban office parks anyways, making driving much more feasible.

100% agreed. Building it would ignore the biggest problem with bart >> connecting people the last mile whether that means home, school, work or errands.

[Gentoo]

Originally Posted by 04kL4nD

Not going to happen.

Rich, white conservatives are terrified of minorities and public transit. They will cry NIMBY all day long

I don't know. That group doesn't seem to carry as much weight here as it once did. From my understanding they didn't want it in Dublin/Pleasanton either but it's there with plans, at least in the thought stage of continuing to Livermore. Hercules is also trying to get an extension themselves. In that case it's BART itself that's dragging its feet.

[Bulldogdad]

They need to expand over the Altamont to Tracy. Or provide bus service.

Heck just getting to Livermore for the ACE hookup would be fantastic.

[bentobox34]

Originally Posted by sav858

There isn't, especially for a BART line. All the job centers along that corridor are in suburban office parks anyways, making driving much more feasible.

The Dublin/Pleasanton line is the lowest performing spur on the East Bay BART system, and that is with a direct connection to Downtown SF. A line from Dublin to Walnut Creek would not have enough demand to justify BART construction. Most people who live and/or work along the line would be able to get where they're going much faster by driving.

[mayorhaggar]

There are 130,000 people living in the San Ramon Valley (Alamo/Danville/San Ramon) and they're pretty cut off from the rest of the Bay Area, especially because there's no direct way to make a trip west to the SF and Oakland areas. I'd only build a line there if the Bay Area really got super serious about transit and was building a lot of lines just for the sake of coverage, something that isn't ever going to happen. A new line would definitely be useful for SRV commuters to connect to lines to places like Oakland and SF. But almost anywhere in the suburban East Bay is too sprawly for any commuter line to be used by a lot of people to get to work, offices are just too scattered around. They'd have to be more concentrated by new BART stations for it to be a good way to get to work from elsewhere. Unless that happened it would mainly be a park n' ride option for people going to more concentrated urban job centers, just like with most East Bay stations.

[sav858]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

There are 130,000 people living in the San Ramon Valley (Alamo/Danville/San Ramon) and they're pretty cut off from the rest of the Bay Area, especially because there's no direct way to make a trip west to the SF and Oakland areas. I'd only build a line there if the Bay Area really got super serious about transit and was building a lot of lines just for the sake of coverage, something that isn't ever going to happen. A new line would definitely be useful for SRV commuters to connect to lines to places like Oakland and SF. But almost anywhere in the suburban East Bay is too sprawly for any commuter line to be used by a lot of people to get to work, offices are just too scattered around. They'd have to be more concentrated by new BART stations for it to be a good way to get to work from elsewhere. Unless that happened it would mainly be a park n' ride option for people going to more concentrated urban job centers, just like with most East Bay stations.

Well Concord, Pleasant Hill, and Walnut Creek all have a decent amount of office space within walking distance. I see a decent amount of people walk from PH BART to the surrounding office buildings. I'm kind of surprised Pleasanton and Dublin BART stations haven't built as much dense, high rise office space near their stations.

I think San Ramon and Pleasanton/Dublin are pretty decent job centers themselves so I'm not sure if there are really that many people heading to SF or Oakland for jobs, at least enough to justify rail service. Traffic is heavy going southbound in the morning and northbound in the evening on 680 between Walnut Creek and the San Ramon Valley, indicating not a lot of people are heading towards SF/Oak.

[cardinal2007]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

But almost anywhere in the suburban East Bay is too sprawly for any commuter line to be used by a lot of people to get to work, offices are just too scattered around. They'd have to be more concentrated by new BART stations for it to be a good way to get to work from elsewhere. Unless that happened it would mainly be a park n' ride option for people going to more concentrated urban job centers, just like with most East Bay stations.

I think this is true of San Jose as well, the only exception is downtown San Jose, but that is only a small fraction of the jobs. Unless San Jose specifically makes an effort to zone for office towers near the BART stations (Berryessa, and Great Mall comes to mind), I'm not sure they will be able to get enough political backing to finish the line to Santa Clara, the ridership will be too low in comparison to projections for phase I, and then people will not vote for another tax increase to finish it. The problem is that it is too far from the currently desired cities by tech companies, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, north end of San Jose, and Santa Clara, roughly in that order are desired, Berryessa will be a tough sell, Great Mall maybe not so much, Cisco has a bunch of offices just on the other side of 880. Location is key, Palo Alto offices rent for I think $5-6/mo/sqft vs something like $2/mo/sqft in downtown SJ. Go to Campbell and you're talking even less. Builders will not build office towers if the rents are too low, I suppose if you fast-track approvals things builder tend to favor that. This is not like the era before the car where the San Francisco San Jose railway puts a line and some stations and the towns pops up around the stations, Los Altos initially started as a small town by the railroad company that built the railroad line from Palo Alto to Los Gatos.

Now with the car, people don't have to be close to transit to commute, so development has been focused around the car, suburban office parks far from transit spread out is common, people will not really use BART that much when it gets to San Jose because of that, even if they put up condos and apts near the stations, no one will be working close to the BART stations, unless they are commuting all the way up to Oakland or SF, which is not likely anyway, shuttles add to commute time, and make for more restricted schedules. Ridership will be limited until they figure out some solution to this issue, maybe once automated cars exist I can summon one with my smart phone when I get to the BART station close to work and it will take me there, but that sounds like technology from far in the future, first we will have to allow the cars to move without a driver, then ....