Thanks for an informative look at BART’s Livermore route options.

This is actually a comment on your October 22 piece on Solano County transit consolidation (the “leave a reply” link for that post doesn’t bring up any place to comment). I’ve been working on a trail map of the Carquinez Strait area, and as an advocate of transit-to-trails advocate, I have to say there are some amazing disconnects. Vallejo Transit goes south to El Cerrito BART without stopping in Crockett* (you can transfer to a local bus at Hercules and backtrack). Benicia Transit crosses Carquinez Strait to Walnut Creek or Pleasant Hill BART without stopping in Martinez. Contra Costa Transit runs several busses from Martinez to Walnut Creek and the 30Z goes to El Cerrito del Norte via Hercules. Amtrak stops in Martinez but nowhere closer than Richmond (proposed Hercules and Benicia outskirts stations may be useful). The Vallejo ferry goes straight to San Francisco. Never mind that there have been two separate transit systems for Vallejo and Benicia.

*Not that Crockett SHOULD be a destination except for history buffs and Sunday drives and local residents (the freeway slings you right overhead). From a trail user’s perspective that could point to the need for better trail connections from Crockett to Hercules.

There are almost no trails where you can complete a loop with local transit, but 3-4 ways to do it from San Francisco or Walnut Creek.

On the positive side, the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council and the Bay Trail are making great progress on a 50-mile scenic loop (with ridgetop and waterfront routes), of which the two new bike paths on the Benicia-Martinez and Zampa Bridges are a big piece of the puzzle. For the short term there are some gaps and it will be a while before you could make a car-free outing of it. But there are enough possibilities it would be worth getting all the local transit agencies (both sides of the strait) to talk to each other. One of those “if you stop here they will come” situations.

San Jose has a million people (the largest city in the bay area), Fremont area has 300,000 people, Oakland has 450,000, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and Milpitas etc. is another million.

Yet, Livermore has a tiny 70,000+ people!!!

At this point this extension will just promote people to sprawl to Livermore, Tracy and Stockton and beyond, and will in the end add more pollution, travel time, spread of mini malls, traffic accidents, reduced trucking, congestion, etc. If Livermore grows to 500,000 then sure build it, and keep the Right of Ways open for it in the mean time.

We should focus on construction within the high density areas with natural built-in TOD (like downtown San Jose, San Jose State, or even someday downtown Livermore) and promote direct routes to high density areas (not following cheap existing industrial train routes, that miss UC Berkeley, downtown Berkeley completely, downtown San Jose, San Jose State, Walnut Creek, etc. etc.) The trains are used as freight and their ROW routes reflect that. Trains don’t hit most of the major shopping or sports centers (even Caltrain really misses SFO, downtown SJ, and arrives in less populated China Basin, etc.). Train ridership to most of Siberia is very low, however train ridership in the metro high density area of Moscow is the highest in the world.

We should focus on high density FIRST! Then later add these fancy lines to the remote areas of the country. Even the CHSRA says in 30-40 years they won’t even reach today’s BART ridership. According to the reason foundation (reasonfoundation.org) HSR will cost closer to spending 100 billion dollars. Reason Foundation projects train ridership between LA and SF to be 1/5th Bart’s current ridership. Is that worth 100billion?

I find it interesting that some are supportive of this route that will clearly promote sprawl yet are against getting the South Bay BARTs 2-3 million people out of the second worst daily traffic in USA.

BART works (not perfect), the highest ridership in the nation if categorized as commuter rail (which many do). It gets that with the direct routes to high density stops.

Repeating the argument that you pay taxes but don’t have BART to your homes doorstep is a weak one. BART will reduce traffic for the entire county, all Livermore residents have made trips to SJ, SF, Oakland, and because BART exists they can take BART in Dublin or enjoy the reduced freeway accidents, reduced pollution, reduced congestion, reduced need for police, reduced need for emergency ambulance services, and increased natural higher density TOD that BART promotes. Danville, Brentwood, Pinole, Blackhawk, Moraga, Pacifica, all have that same problem. That’s the problem with almost every transit-rail system it can’t go to every single persons door step. It’s interesting that the global warming deniers are also some of the biggest HSR promoters to their small rural towns.

I am for BART or some future faster version of BART-HSR to Livermore, but that should not be the highest priority. For the future, I vote for route version 3 or 2A which should serve the most people promote the natural highest density growth around the stations, first we should get the millions in San Jose off the streets.

HSR actually has a better argument for faster freight than carrying people.

1. It has the most potential with two TOD capable stations.

2. Avoids the Staples Developement that’s being proposed by the City Of Pleasanton at El Charro & the conflict that comes with it.

3. Avoids the noise complaints (Nimby’s) from at grade on UPRR ROW alignment, except the small stretch east of the 1st St. overpass.

4. The costs of tunneling to downtown are mitigated by continuing on I-580 to Portola where the tunnel section begins and not having to build an aerial above El Charro and above a small section downtown where UPRR ROW is small.

5. Vasco is a short drive to the station for CV commuters, Brentwood residents have a straight-shot accros I-580 on Vasco to the Station.

6. Almost direct connection to LLNL Lab (A Lab shuttle bus would do the trick).

7. An ACE Train transfer station for both stations.

8. The Maintenance Yard shown in Alt. 3 can still be built with trains that are out of service at Vasco (after unloading passengers) either remain “Out of Service” and head back to the the Maintenance Yard or stay put, doors open and ready to head back to SF, in service until the time to depart.

If we’re talking about serving park-and-riders, we shouldn’t even THINK about discussing anything other than commuter rail.

I do wonder how many more car drivers they think they can continue to siphon off I-580, West Dublin will add another 1200 parking spaces for those that want to ditch their car. And some might switch to ACE once the connection is there.

It looks as if BART is still obsessed with providing parking. A station at Murrieta Blvd. would be in the middle of a dense neighbourhood (if poorly designed- though compare it to Dublin Pleasanton!), but the planned intermediate station is at Isabel Ave where they can build the “necessary” parking.