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In honor of it being the 50th Anniversary of BART, BART announced their vision for BART over the next 50 years. Those plans include:
-New transbay tube
-More stations in SF and extensions in the East Bay and in the Peninsula
-More trains with more doors and no drivers. Also with flat screen TVs showing news and information riders might need
-Bigger, nicer, stations
Hey, what about flying trains?
BART based their plans on projections that say that we'll be seeing upwards of 10 million more people to the area by 2050 and the need to accommodate them. There's also the thinking that building a new transbay tube could help during another earthquake in case one of the bridges goes down (like in '89). That is, of course, if BART doesn't get wiped out by an earthquake.
The one hitch to all these fabulous ideas? Underground trolls Money, of course. But first, there'll be lots of studies to study the idea.
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Rejected title for the presentation : "Look at all the cool things that will never happen because of budget cuts!"
Hmmm - dson't see nothing about creating a sytstem that's reliable and runs efficiently.
The brew-ha-ha of BART and all Bay Area public projects... BART's wish list won't be done til the year 2100 due to an increase in steel costs, and the usual extra millions of dollars in "additional costs" for being over budget.
I don't see how you can accuse BART of being unreliable--it pretty much keeps its schedules down to the minute, except on the rare occasion when there's a problem in the tube. (Solution: build another tube. See plan.)
Inefficient, in the sense that it has too many employees and costs too much to operate? Sure, that's true of most transit systems to some extent, although BART recovers a higher percentage of its costs from fares than almost any other US system. Not bad!
In exchange for this boosterism, BART, please drop Warm Springs and San Jose and give us a Geary subway. kthxbye
god damn it! All night service, BART! All night service!
Sure, it's a waste of money, but if you can find someone to sponsor flat screen TVs, maybe you can find someone to sponsor service until 3am.
And a track-fixing robot or something so you can address maintenance concerns.
come on .. at least on weekends?
tobjar:
Bart has tried running 24/7 train service in the past, but the ridership isn't high enough to justify the cost of running during that time period.
On occasion, Bart does run 24/7, and did after the '89 quake for months at a time.
On another topic, Bart's on time performance is 95%, the best in the bay area. They've hired more emergency medical personnel to take care of a major source of delays: people getting sick on trains. The hope is to get you to your destination on time 98% of the time.
Some of these proposals are just dumb. More of the same mistakes repeated. Stop sprawling outward (it is already the sprwal king of metros in the world). The only thing that makes sense is lines on Geary, VanNess and denser parts of EastBay-you know where people mostly live-
fuck. Run it 24/7, and promote it. typical of them to "try" it, not promote it, then oh well no one rides so we'll kill it...when the FUCK was that????? I've been here since 76 and NEVER HEARD OF IT. start doing it, LET PEOPLE KNOW, and let us have some faith that it will actually run this way, so people can START RELYING ON IT FOR JOBS AND RECREATION.
FUCKIN DUH.
Why not go all the way around the bay from Millbrae to Fremont rather than building a new trasnbay tube? Wouldn't that be cheaper and serve more people? Or have the tube from Oakland airport to SFO. Come on BART people, get some vision over here.
Could they run trains with VIP bar cars?
Howsabout cars that ban cell phones? I'd pay extra for either option...
How about they actually start hosing the puke off the seats like other transit systems do, and update the 1970s-vintage signs in some of the stations. I'm all for ambitious plans, but c'mon BART, you've gotta crawl before you can sprint.
Bay Area transit agencies, in an all-too-rare example of common sense in action, have already given us 80% of the benefit of all-night BART at 10% of the cost. Google the AC Transit 800 line. It runs every half hour on Friday and Saturday nights, and it's a pretty fun ride.
Vision? Let's see some cash on the table here. A transbay tube from OAK to SFO would be ridiculously expensive.
A cheaper alternative to BART around the Bay exists. Upgrade Caltrain (electrification to reduce headways and increase level of service, complete the downtown extension to the new Transbay Terminal) and ACE (or implement Michael Kiesling's Caltrain Metro East proposal), and there you go -- a ring of BART-like service around the Bay (electrified trains with high levels of service -- 20 min/train service). BART should be focused on providing more service to its primary service areas -- SF, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties. A second transbay tube would help with that. If that tube could serve other parts of the inner cities -- all the better. (A subway down Geary and 19th, maybe? A stop at Jack London?)
And come on, the "70's era signage" isn't THAT bad. Univers has a classically modern look to it. It fits in with the overall design of the system. That's not to say that signage can't be improved -- maybe some signs on the trains indicating what line it is and the end destination might be better than the LED signs. (Muni signage, on the other hand...)
Snaps to Tom for reminding us all of the coordinated Owl services between Muni, AC Transit, and SamTrans. Now if they had a publicity campaign...