With more than 430,000 daily rides including 95,000 that start in Oakland and 77,000 that end in Oakland, BART provides a critical service to Oakland and the whole Bay Area. BART’s system was designed over 40 years ago to carry a fraction of the people and service it now delivers on a daily basis. Like all infrastructure, BART’s components need replacement and modernization after a long life of use. The proposed $3.5 billion bond identifies effective expenditures that will deliver a fix-it-first approach to maximize the potential of the new fleet of rail cars (roomier, quieter, and a third set of doors!) that will start arriving in 2017. These are not the glamorous ribbon-cutting cutting projects the media craves, but they are essential to keeping our regional transit backbone from falling apart, and Transport Oakland strongly supports Measure RR.
For more on the specifics of the bond measure, read BART’s press release, or this excellent analysis from SF Streetsblog. Also check out the Yes for RR Campaign website and Facebook page.
Photo Credit: thomashawk