> The gleaming new glass and white-painted-steel station sat finished but empty, disconnected from the rest of the BART system. Nevertheless, it was staffed with five station agents, two janitors and a train controller because of a quirk in the way BART schedules workers.
If there is such a scheduling quirk, where schedules are determined in advance, why is overtime such an issue with BART? If they can allocate overtime at the last schedule because of a need for more resource, surely they can do the opposite. But of course, the real answer is: unions.
Yes, that paragraph struck me as odd as well. I can handle the idea of a regular staff presence in an empty building to discourage vandalism &c but 5 staff on full time hours?
Then again, the two year extra salary cost as a percentage of the contract cost is probably below rounding error.
infrastructure projects in the US tend to be really expensive and prone to cost explosions. There are a number of reasons for this- for example, the design of the terminal is absurdly overly done for what it needs to be. Another issue is regulations- we tend to build things to an absurd level of regulations. ANother issue can be environmental restrictions (these added significantly to the cost of extending BART to SFO), which are often used as obstructions to development in the Bay Area.
When you hear about massive projects being done cheaper (especially in per-mile costs), often it's because the project isn't running through an established, densely-populated area. So what you end up getting is "cost of building in a wilderness" versus "cost of building in a dense established city". The latter is going to be more expensive.
The BART extension is being built along an existing rail right-of-way for most of its distance so I'm not sure how much existing development can be blamed for the high cost.
You're right, Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul, they're not densely populated at all!
Not to say there aren't valid reasons for some projects to be more expensive (especially when you're tunneling), but by all accounts the US manages to have outsized costs for pretty much any infrastructure project.
Are infrastructure projects a lot cheaper in Japan, South Korea and Singapore? I honestly don't know. I know they have better rail infrastructure, but those societies also pay higher taxes and make rail infrastructure a higher priority.
I often go to work at a lab that is as close to the Warm Springs BART station as any business could be, but I will still drive because walkability is so bad it will still be a 15 minute walk. Maybe someday they will build something near these East Bay BART stations.
That complete lack of walkability is some serious riff-raff proofing they're doing there. Can't have anyone without a car just wandering into a nearby pleasant little suburban cul-de-sac now can we? You see, lack of walkability is basically a strategy for keeping poor people out of nice areas. San Francisco is the exception to this rule because of the hills. Poor people don't like to walk up hills to go to the liquor store ergo nice houses can be near poor neighborhoods as long as they are sufficiently up hill.
That certainly make sense. I had a similar idea about the reason behind it: The local residents don't want people parking in their neighborhood. Every BART station I've been to gets filled to max capacity during commute hours. On top of that, the hours are limited so overnight is impossible, but that could be done in a residential area. Businesses around the stations have to put up signs saying no BART parking allowed (how is this enforced?). The people that live nearby wouldn't want people parking for weeks for free on the streets outside their homes. I know this is illegal and they could be towed, but I wouldn't doubt this is involved in the planning.
Here is how residential parking works in such cases: posted limits like 2 or 3 hours parking, local residents get stickers to their cars exempting them from limit. That's all.
In Santa Clara County they have a pretty strong vision for more transit-oriented development, for the Milpitas and Berryessa Stations [0]. We'll see if that actually happens though, it seems like a lot of those East Bay stations are just meant to be driven to.
>it seems like a lot of those East Bay stations are just meant to be driven to
BART is in a really incoherent place with respect to this. It definitely wants the number of station-accessible parking spaces to shrink, but its plans for the surrounding areas include basically everything except housing for BART commuters.
Offices, retail, housing for disabled homeless veterans, housing for seniors, housing for unemployed people, community centers, maker spaces for underrepresented groups, etc. Anything and everything but market rate housing.
A "transit village" plan was partly executed at Macarthur, except predictably, the market rate housing part fell through. Another "transit village" is going up on the parking lot at West Oakland (best station to drive to - sits on an underutilized freeway, parking still available at 9:30am in adjacent private lot, departures every couple minutes, and only 7 minutes to Embarcadero). The transit oriented development will include, again, everything but market rate housing.
Far as I can tell, BART is not trying to bring station users any closer, it just wants them to switch to bicycles. (Fuck that shit. Right before boarding a crowded train is the worst possible time to pedal a few miles uphill. I'll pay whatever it costs for the remaining privately owned parking, and when I can't, get out of this hellhole. I run 4 times a week, but it's sort of the whole point of civilization to me that exercise is decoupled from transportation).
The Berryessa station, at least, should be bikable from a decently-sized residential area, not to mention reachable by light rail or bus. We'll see what people actually do.
It'll also be nice if we see neighborhoods that pop up similar to what's on the Caltrain corridor, like in Burlingame or Mountain View. Really nice, walkable areas with lots of retail and housing.
Allowing houses to be built is a giveaway to the plutocratic developer conspiracy to destroy the earth, poison our lungs, and gentrify our neighborhoods.
There's this frustrating principle of public transit where I've never lived in a place that I could take it and get there faster than I could by some other means. There's a bus stop right in front of my house, and light rail station a few minutes walk away. The train stops in front of my office, but I can still bike or drive to work faster.
When I lived far out in the suburbs there was a commuter train once an hour and I could always count on being able to drive the freeway faster, even in traffic even though it was miserable.
Don't worry, we will soon enough "improve" public transportation by slowing down, banning, and pricing you out of the alternatives.
EDIT: Yeah, this is flippant, but far as I can tell it's the truth. Policymakers are well aware that public transit is often not the most attractive option, and are working to bring it to the top of your list of options by degrading driving until it's worse. Congestion pricing, parking scarcity, reducing road throughput, etc. I guess in principle some of this might make buses more attractive, but not trains.
If anything, it's the opposite. Public transport in the U.S. sucks, and driving always gets the upper hand in policymaking. These two go hand in hand, as the more people drive, the less money and effort goes into making the public transport systems better.
Stuff like congestion pricing isn't intended to increase use of public transport (that's a side effect), it's intended to reduce traffic and make driving "better" (by pricing lower-income folks out of it, but that's generally how "better" works in the U.S. anyway).
I have -- when we lived out in the Bronx and I commuted to NYU. On a weekday, nothing is strictly faster than some form of public transit, though on weekends driving can be a little faster. Then there's parking, which is a whole other story. But New York is unusual for a US city; I absolutely agree with you as far as every other US city I've lived in is concerned.
The VTA is undergoing a complete overhaul of their bus schedules [0], in anticipation of the Milpitas and Berryessa BART station openings, which will happen later this year. After that, there'll be express buses from both stations to Downtown San Jose, and, of course, existing connections to light rail.
VTA serves Santa Clara County and the station is in Alameda County; and the next BART station will connect with VTA's light rail and be next to a large transportation center.
Sure, but given they are already planning on making massive changes to the bus schedule as well as light rail, might as well wait for BART to be in Milpitas before doing that, since it's supposed to be "this year".
It was great while it lasted. Living walking distance from Fremont station - end of the line - meant I could guarantee a seat on the train in the mornings. But now the train will be full by the time it gets to Fremont station if it is before 9am. On a positive note there will be far fewer people getting off at 5pm at the Fremont station and clogging up the escalators.
It is more efficient on average, but those that want to walk will be slowed down, while those willing to stand will be faster since the overcrowding will be reduce. However, if those that are not in a hurry and are willing to stand, they should simply deal with the overcrowding.
I commuted from Dublin. ~7AM is last parking spot and the trains were standing room only when they pulled out. Felt sorry for everyone that boarded between there and Embarcadero.
