Transbay Blog
Regional Rail
BART Board selects alignment for Livermore extension
This past year BART has been working its way through the environmental review process for the planned extension to Livermore. The goals of this process were to select a preferred alignment alternative from among the many considered and to preserve necessary right-of-way. A draft Program Environmental Impact Report was released last fall, which provided preliminary … Continue reading
Record of Decision issued for BART to San Jose
BART to San Jose has advanced one step forward in the New Starts process. The Federal Transit Administration has now issued a Record of Decision (ROD) for the BART extension, which marks federal approval of the project’s environmental impact statement. The ROD only covers the initial phase between Warm Springs and Berryessa, including two new … Continue reading
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
Last week was a week of contrasts for the commuter rail line that connects San Francisco to the Peninsula and South Bay. At the start of the week, Caltrain was poised to certify an environmental impact report, thus formally approving and adopting its electrification project. This would be a big milestone, as it would finally … Continue reading
Gearing Up for Livermore and Altamont (Part 1)
Residents of Livermore are fond of reminding us every so often that there is an outstanding “debt” to their city. They remind us that they have been paying BART taxes since the district’s beginning, and and that they have been waiting patiently for decades for the construction of their long-promised and past overdue BART extension. … Continue reading
Trans-Beale Terminal
The California High-Speed Rail Authority’s seemingly favorite question — exactly where should high-speed rail terminate in San Francisco? — has again reared its head. By now, we are accustomed to this agency’s shifting moods — like last year, when then-chairman Quentin Kopp opined that the Transbay Transit Center was not really necessary, and that 4th … Continue reading
Peninsula Investments
It’s funny how things sometimes turn out. In terms of funding, BART has long been the Bay Area’s favorite son. Year after year, BART is allocated a major piece of the region’s transit funding pie, a piece that is disproportionately large for the number of people it moves. Meanwhile: slow, antiquated, dirty, screechy Caltrain has … Continue reading
BACEI Releases Workplan
The Bay Area Council Economic Institute (BACEI), in response to a request from the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, has released its Bay Area Economic Recovery Workplan. This is essentially a compendium of regional priorities and projects (submitted by MTC and local governments) that strategizes potential targets for ARRA stimulus money. The proposals fall … Continue reading
BART 2008 Surveys Tell the Story of Bay Area Regional Growth
BART survey data (2008). Top: rider home locations; bottom: rider employment locations. Courtesy of BART. BART has released its 2008 Station Profile Study, updating its last study from 1998. The data, which is collected from rider surveys, is BART’s version of the census. It reveals the demographic profile of BART riders, and it provides valuable … Continue reading
April 2009 BART Budget and Project Updates
UPDATE (24 April 2009): At its April 23 meeting, the BART board decided to postpone approval of the Oakland Airport Connector, but nonetheless approved the transfer of $50 million of seismic retrofit funding and $70 million of ARRA stimulus funding to the project. Meanwhile, the FEIR for eBART was approved 8-1, with Tom Radulovich dissenting. … Continue reading
Commission Unveils Regional Plan for Transit
This morning, at a press conference held at the Lake Merritt BART station in Oakland, officials from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission revealed a regional transit plan for the Bay Area. Just days after announcing revisions to Transportation 2035, the current regional plan for the nine Bay Area counties, the Commission announced that it will now … Continue reading
Subscribe
Links
If you are interested in California water issues, you may want to check out my other blog on that topic.
Copyright © 2007-2021 Transbay Blog.
Transbay Blog 