BART has kicked-off its transit-village project at Walnut Creek. And as usual, it has a huge amount of parking. Might as well call it a parking-oriented village:
The first preliminary work begins Saturday in the “south permit lot,” where the new 900-stall BART parking garage will be built. It will stand next to the existing multilevel garage, which will remain in service. Ron Heckmann, a spokesman for the project, said the new structure will more than compensate for the loss of the south and north permit lots and the permit lot east of the station to residential and retail development, the net gain being about 100 stalls.
The new garage building is expected to open in late 2018, said Arthur, adding he hopes all the 596 apartments and ground-floor retail spaces will be finished in about five years. Parking for apartment residents and retail patrons will be provided in underground garages below those future buildings.
775 underground parking garage spaces will be built (at great expense) for the 596 apartments — in addition to the 900-stall parking garage.
[…] BART’s transit village is more like a parking-oriented village (Systemic Failure) […]
The problem most BART passengers have: getting home from the BART station, the door-to-door issue that’s common to trains, planes, and buses. Hence, the parking by BART stations is essential to many, if not most, of its passengers.
Parking is not essential to “most” passengers. Just 29% of BART passengers drive and park at a station (source: 2015 BART access study). Parking garages are extremely inefficient for increasing station access. A citywide cycletrack network could be built for less than the cost of a parking garage. And whereas the garages fill up by 7am, the cycletrack network can be used all day long.
Problem is no one wants to give up an inch of road space to accommodate a cycletrack. That in-and-of-itself is a war!
Problem stems from car OWNERSHIP – poor road infrastructure forced people to buy cars. Now that they INVESTED in it, they don’t want to suffer the inconvenience of an unreliable or nonexistant public transit and pedestrian infrastructure. Car-share and scooter-share are pay-as-you-go, so would eliminate that VESTED resistance. But car-share does not exist in suburbs where they are needed most. Cars are still the only option in the suburbs.
I think the first step to change things is to legislate a requirement that all politicians who sit on transportation policy agencies MUST use the public transit they manage on a daily basis for all their travel needs. But asking a politician to make laws to regulate themselves will be 🔄 next to impossible.