Interesting development in Livermore:
In a surprising about-face, Livermore’s leaders Monday yielded to a group that wants the future BART-to-Livermore extension to stay on the freeway. Mayor Marshall Kamena, Vice Mayor John Marchand and Councilwoman Marj Leider voted 3-2 for an initiative aimed at keeping stations along Interstate 580. Councilmen Jeff Williams and Doug Horner were the dissenters. Kamena made the motion to adopt the initiative, essentially forcing the council to renounce its earlier endorsement of BART’s plan to build stations downtown and at Vasco Road.
A downtown location is better than a freeway median, but not if it means digging a $3 billion subway through ex-urban greenfield. Still, it is disheartening that residents opposed the downtown alignment for all the wrong reasons:
A coalition called Keep BART on 580 formed earlier this year, with members walking door to door to gather signatures for the initiative. The group argued an underground route downtown was a bad idea, citing undesirable high-density housing, the planned destruction of 11 homes and possible increased crime though City Council had pledged to build a police substation at the station.
So irrational NIMBYism killed a smart growth policy?
Transit planners know full well how hard it is to properly design a station for a rapid transit line along a freeway. Not putting it along a freeway would most certainly generate higher growth.
I meant “ridership”, not “growth”…
The ridership numbers were virtually the same ~200 difference between the freeway and downtown and with the new station alignment, adopted by City Council because of the initiative, more housing will be able to be built at the freeway station which will allow for more ridership. So I’d expect the numbers to be equal if not better than downtown. Also the housing affected by the route in downtown was ~92 homes (check the livermore website for a list). I would say that the downtown supporters are ISEBYites (In someone else’s backyard). As long as they didn’t have it running by their residence every 13 minutes the downtown Vasco route was ok. Wait until the High Speed Rail folks try to run their trains through and under Livermore wine country. The same people that advocated for downtown will be against that because it is in their backyard.
Toronto has a subway along side a freeway – the alan expressway. What a dumb idea that was!
You put a subway in high density population areas.
Much of North America does not know how to do high-quality transit that people will actually ride, apparently. I have come to the conclusion that the best way forward is for jurisdictions to use their money to make radical improvements to bus services, such as preferred signalling, express service, and bulb-out bus stops. This improved service would increase ridership, as well as economic development along the most popular routes. This in turn would build a constituency in support of more permanent solutions, such as streetcars or subways, along these corridors.