Provide a cost-effective, socially equitable, safe, clean, accessible, reliable, and customer friendly system.

By Roy Nakadegawa

BART has rebuilt its worn aging system resulting in an award of "Best Transit System in America". To attain a reliable, and customer friendly system BART also needs to rebuild for earthquake resistance that shows dire result if we do not. BART should integrate Land Use to development that increases non-polluting access and improve our environment and livability.

Since I have been on BART Board, BART has come a long way in improving service in part for the need to look more at our existing aging system that has a present value of around $20 Billion in lieu of expensive extensions, and using our hard to garner public funds to make sound and effective decisions. Again I base this on my extensive experience and knowledge of transit from widespread travels to all the major cities in the US, Canada, Germany, and Japan and numerous other cities in Europe and South America studying various forms of transit, its capital cost, its operation and maintenance cost. I retired as a City Traffic Engineer, so I am knowledgeable not only of transit but overall transportation. I have been a decision maker 32 years, served on the AC Transit Board 20 years and now BART 12 years. I also serve on National Committees with Transportation Research Board, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences along with Professional Consultants and Professors on Transit Performance and Land Development. I have made critical analysis especially of our BART extensions and provided them to our Board and Staff. While most of the staff agrees with much of my analysis the Board generally passes them off favoring public desires and opinions.

Regarding public desires and opinions, which my opponents campaign on is fine if it is well studied and has shown to be effective, however, most of the public are not aware that most proposed projects are by politicians that are not well studied regarding cost, effectiveness and on social equity. Also most politicians and public do not realize that Transportation and Transit is only one facet of development and should be examined holistically or comprehensively and should not be treated as an end in itself or in isolation. The public and also the majority of the BART Board, is not fully aware of cost and effectiveness of transit projects and the need to integrate land developments and land use for BART to be a viable cost-effective project. They generally assume if one builds BART it will attract riders and land development will follow.

Since BART is so appealing and popular, politicians keep proposing extensions further and further into the suburbs. So, to get riders we build tremendous 2,000-3,000 size parking lots that take up 4-6 city blocks. For most suburban station 80-90% of riders arrive via the auto and the number of spaces are used up faster than the 20-year projected study what the EIR states would be needed. Since congestion increases, more driver are switching to use BART and since most parking spaces are provided free they rapidly fill. So there is a great demand for more parking because many are filled in less than a couple of years. People as well as some Board Members are not concerned there are social equity problems of providing free parking. We provide it for the more affluent suburban BART riders that cost about $3.50 per day minimum to construct and maintain whereas many central city users who do not have any parking often pay an extra fare on local transit to use BART. Free parking just for operation/maintenance costs BART at least $1 per day per space, which does not including its construction cost, which is a total subsidy. The $1 is subsidized from the overall fares which the central city rider's pay who has no parking. The constrution cost for the parking is paid from general taxes the overall public pays. Even offering Parking at $2 per day will not cover both its capital cost as well as operation/maintenance cost of the parking, which are mostly in the suburbs used by more affluent riders subsidized by those who do not use parking and where the affluent suburban riders' household income is about double that of central city rider. Also another serious inequity, which many are not aware of is that since the project cost is so enormous and the ridership so low we are subsidizing the affluent BART rider $60 per round trip for 20 years which is about what we provide a family of three on welfare for bare existence.

Adding more parking does little for our air quality or reduce congestion because it promotes more sprawl that actually exacerbates and compounds this problem. And since parking takes up so much land immediate to the station, to build a decent Transit Oriented Development (TOD) next to the station it will costs considerably because there is a poor unwritten BART policy that requires replacement of each and every existing parking space before the TOD plan will be approved.

Viewing BART's 32 years of existence; has any decent TOD occurred at any stations? Again the biggest problem is the Board's requirement for replacment parking. We have had several developers interested in developing TODs at BART stations and invested considerable funds in plaaning and providing an EIR but the cost for replacement parking increased the project cost so much they all concluded that it is impractical. I have consistently said BART should make some amendment that allows a parking reduction depending on the degree and quality of the proposed TOD.

Currently the only station where a TOD was built is Fruitvale but it took considerable added Measure B sales tax for parking replacement for this project to proceed. This TOD vitalized not just the development itself but also the neighboring several block area. Before the TOD completion, the surrounding area business had a vacancy rate of over 10% now after its completion the vacancy rate is down to 1%.

At Pleasant Hill BART Station the County is proposing to invest $21 million in Redevelopment Funds to primarily fund a 7 story replacement parking structure. Even so, most of the neighbors are opposing the TOD because the Development itself also require additional parking, which means the TOD will attract more autos and congestion.

On my continuous urging for the need to evaluate our existing system in a comprehensive manner the Board has approved and rebuilt most of our 25-30 year old system, that now provides a cost-effective, equitable, safe, clean, accessible, reliable, and customer friendly system. This included; rebuilding most all BART's train cars in lieu of purchasing new ones at one half the cost, rehabbing all our elevators, replacing some of our escalators and reconstructing all remainder, and made other needed station improvements. Through this effort, this year BART has been awarded "the Best Transit System in America" by the American Public Transportation Association.

Still we must make another very important improvement, one that would have dire consequence if we do not, but funding it is a major problem. If we do not act soon it may have disastrous effect to our $20 Billion system. It is about an impending major earthquake. I was the Board member instrumental to bring this to the Board's attention but had to introduce a motion on this 3 times before Board's approval. The resulting study of the Earthquake's impact convinced the Board of the imperative nature for an earthquake retrofit program that would assure BART's sustainability after a major quake.

This earthquake study, reviewed by a panel of world experts on earthquakes, disclosed the most vulnerable part from a major quake is BART's Tube that crosses under the Bay. If the Tube is damaged, it will have dire effects not only with BART riders but will also create very serious affect on Bay Region's traffic by causing tremendous traffic back up. This is because BART carries more people than the bridge itself during peak periods. We experienced this backup when BART workers went on strike for a week, the traffic backed up not only on all the transbay bridges but caused over an hour delay around the freeway maze just east of the bridge. The freeways backup extended past Richmond, beyond Caldecott Tunnel and to almost San Leandro. It affected the mobility and economy of the region for a week. Since this was 7 years ago, traffic has increased, the backup will be even greater. Receently a UC study determined that congestion at the Freeway Maze wil have traffic delays of a minumum of 3 hours. This will surely affect not only the Region's mobility but its Econmy as well for to repair the damaged Tube, according to the consulting engineers, will take 2 years or more.

If BART Tube is damaged, it would cost several times more. than the retrofit, which is estimated at $1.3 billion. There are several known or expected sources to reduce it, so the remainder of $980 million is what we have placed as a Bond Measure AA on the ballot that will be paid from a property tax at an average rate of $7 per $100,000 in assessed value, so an average home owner would pay $28-35 per year.

While on the Board, I have given talks to various groups such as at UC Berkeley's Graduate Transportation Seminars and public service groups on transit and transportation. That is the reason many Academics, Professionals and public interest groups involved and knowledgeable of transportation, transit and planning have endorsed me. I stress the need for a comprehensive and holistic approach for large transit projects.

If BART utilized the fundamental concept of requiring better planning and integration with local transit agencies to serve the existing stations, BART would minimize the need for much of the parking and assure the neighbors that a planned TOD will occur and that it would not only be a benefit and asset but enhance livability to the area. I have stressed this greater need in comprehensive planning to the Board and Staff. I have suggested that Staff work with communities to change their land use zoning to what is compatible to TODs because BART lacks powers to change land use zoning beyond the parking lot. Having an integrated plan agreement or understanding with the Cities the TOD plan will lead to future develoments that will have less pollution and auto congestion. Because of my input to the Board and Staff some of my thoughts are beginning to slowly and gradually be accepted for consideration. The Staff has since provided the Board the Strategic Plan as well as the Station Area Development Plan, which the Board has approved as Policy.

Actually if one really made a thorough assessment of futher extensions, we would not extend BART furhter into the suburbs because they are so costly. A Metro system like BART should only serve higher density areas. Other countries Metro systems do not extend into suburbs. In lieu, other countries do provide commuter rail to serve the suburbs, which cost far less. Our region already has several commuter rail lines that parallel BART, which could easily and readily be upgrade at far less cost rather than extending BART.