We're going to be wiping away tears and vomit and picking up pieces for a while now, but in the good news column, at least for BART, they got their bond passed.
District Measure RR, the $3.5 billion bond, received a little over 70 percent of the vote regionally. The measure required a two-thirds majority of votes to pass and was also on the Alameda and Contra Costa County ballots. It got 81 percent of San Francisco's vote. Alameda County, with all its 1156 districts reporting, was just over 70 percent in favor, Just 59 percent of Contra Costa County voters and with all 656 of its districts reporting.
$1 billion of that will go toward fixing and maintaining BART power infrastructure hopefully avoiding another disaster like that voltage spike problem earlier this year.
And, as the Examiner reports, "One of the biggest chunks of the bond, $625 million, will go toward renewing 90 miles of BART’s 107 total miles of track much of which was first laid when BART started in the early 1970s."
Also, BART's train control system, which was designed in the 1960's, will be getting replaced.
The bond won wide backing during the campaign from business groups and private companies throughout the region, including most major sports franchises. Supporters argued that reinvesting in BART is vital to the Bay Area economy and for the welfare of everyone trying to travel in the region, regardless of the mode of transportation.But opponents, still furious with a pair of strikes that shut down the system in 2013 and with the union contracts that settled them, mounted an aggressive No campaign.
Opposition was led by Orinda state Sen. Steve Glazer and East Bay Times columnist Daniel Borenstein. Citing BART’s 2013 strikes and labor contracts, they argued that BART management and the agency’s elected board have lavished high pay and benefits on employees and cannot be trusted with the infusion of money for capital projects.
To recap, you can smoke pot anywhere now. Except not on BART. And BART has more money now.
