Other than money, is Geography the Biggest Obstacle to BART expansion? (San Francisco: construction, taxes)

[Kevroqs]

Other than money, is Geography the Biggest Obstacle to BART expansion?

No, because there's so much development and there's not enough space. Unless you want to tear down buildings and displace people.

You could build a tunnel but I don't think it would hold up when a major earthquake hits

[Kevroqs]

Originally Posted by edsg25

Sure, Marin wanted to remain pastoral and mellow, but, let's face it, it definitely is topography that keeps Marin out of the system.

Plus all those people with homes valued over a million in Marin county would not want a public transportation to decrease their home value.

[ketch89]

Originally Posted by Kevroqs

Plus all those people with homes valued over a million in Marin county would not want a public transportation to decrease their home value.

Even though in reality it would increase their home value.

[MrJester]

Originally Posted by Kevroqs

Other than money, is Geography the Biggest Obstacle to BART expansion?

No, because there's so much development and there's not enough space. Unless you want to tear down buildings and displace people.

You could build a tunnel but I don't think it would hold up when a major earthquake hits

Well, when you have a bay as big as the SF Bay, it's going to take 20 years just to build a second transbay crossing. Tell me since when NYC, DC, or Chicago's rapid transit systems have had to deal with that big of an obstacle.

Because we currently have only one transbay crossing, BART headways are crappy, at 15 minutes or so if you're on a station with only a single line. With only one transbay crossing carrying four lines, bottlenecks would be massive if you further increased the number of trains per hour.

And yeah, it seems highly unlikely that that second crossing will carry BART, so those 15 minute headways are here to stay. Planners want it to carry Amtrak.

[mysticaltyger]

It isn't just money, but all the bureaucratic hoops you have to go through to get the money.

[Ruth4Truth]

OP, just a minor note of correction to your initial post; the trans-bay BART tube doesn't "tunnel under" the Bay. It rests on the Bay floor. Tunneling would be involved in the sections where the tube connects to the land, and an exit/entrance lines to/from the tube to street level would be built. There's been discussion of putting another tube across the Bay, that would serve the Peninsula, but it's remained in the discussion phase.

Also, I really wonder about how much potential there is to build subway lines under SF city. There are now underground streetcar lines here and there. But I wonder to what extent the potential might be limited by the natural aquifer under the city. I don't know exactly where it's located, but there is a fresh water aquifer down there, that would impede tunneling.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by Kevroqs

Plus all those people with homes valued over a million in Marin county would not want a public transportation to decrease their home value.

Marin already has public transit to/from SF. No one's complaining.

[sav858]

Originally Posted by ketch89

Biggest obstacle is municipal/county boundaries. San Francisco cares about San Francisco. Palo Alto cares about Palo Alto. Little freaking Piedmont cares about Piedmont. A region that should have strong regional governance instead has 101 cities each vying for their own interests. Instead of strong institutions (that attract talented staff) you have worthless dead-end jobs with no potential for promotion, so our smaller cities are staffed by idiots (or at least, people with no ambition). If the region were merged into several large cities, it would be governed far better.

Perhaps on the regional level but highly doubtful on the more localized level, if anything that would be worse. Bigger agencies/municipalities tend to be more bureaucratic and less responsive to residents. And honestly what large metro area has "strong regional governance"?

Most cities, if not all, want BART at this point. It's definitely costs, which are related to geography, keeping BART from being more expansive. That and other areas have built their own alternatives to BART (SMART, Caltrain, etc..).

[sav858]

Originally Posted by Kevroqs

Other than money, is Geography the Biggest Obstacle to BART expansion?

No, because there's so much development and there's not enough space. Unless you want to tear down buildings and displace people.

You could build a tunnel but I don't think it would hold up when a major earthquake hits

Why? They have before and as well as in numerous other cities prone to earthquakes.

[WizardOfRadical]

NIMBY, operations costs, construction, engineering.

The WHOLE-****ING-THING, is expensive.

The biggest problem is the conceptual idea of BART. It doesn't function as an inner city rapid transit, nor does it function as suburban commuter rail. It attempts to be a hybrid of both, but doesn't excel at either. That's not to say it isn't highly utilized. Ridership is quite high, but it doesn't have the type of success that Chicago's L or the NY Subway has. Heck,it actually has LESS ridership per mile than the LA Metro.

And it doesn't really have the suburban reach that Chicago Metro, MTA(New York), MBTA(Boston) or SEPTA(Philly)has. What-with their miles and miles of rail-commuter suburbs.

There is a huge Bart Void in the exurbs(Fairfield/Brentwood/Livermore/Morgan Hill), north bay, silicon valley, and a large chunk of the 680 corridor that would seriously benefit from having BART. Yes, there are other agencies. But the Balkanized nature of these agencies means there is little cohesion. And this can make tasks like say, getting from Fremont to Palo Alto or Menlo Park to Emeryvile by rail extremely time consuming.

On a whole, I like the Bay Area transit layout. Fortunately the Bay Area has been taken over by transplants who know the Bay is still lacking, and there seems to be more public pressure to do something about it than 10 years ago.