BART is the new Bay Bridge

October 28, 2009 | Posted by Paul Wolborsky

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/28/california.bay.bridge.accident/index.html

A simple question for you. What happens when Mass Transit becomes the shortest route between point A to B? BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), a line of electric trains nearly girdling the Bay gets to find out. The 77 year old Bay Bridge has closed down indefinitely, with catastrophic consequences. Ever since Loma Prieta’s famous span collapse, it’s been vulnerable. They started building a new bridge next to it 2 years ago, but that project was put on hold due to the financial crisis.

Now, the unthinkable happened, the Bay Bridge crumbled and it’s CATASTROPHIC. The Bay Bridge connects San Francisco with the East Bay (Oakland, Berkeley) and… Northern California and… any of a dozen or so states feeding into I-80 (I-80 ends at the SF end of the Bay Bridge).

If you want to drive from Oakland/Berkeley to San Francisco, you’d either have to take the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge to the Golden Gate, or the San Mateo Bridge, both a 30-40 mile detour on already heavily-trafficed routes.

The only direct connection now is BART, which goes under the bay from Alameda to San Francisco. It’s SHOWTIME! And BART, the Mass Transit alternative, gets to find out what it’s like being the main artery.

It’s happened before. 77 years ago. Which is why they built the bridge in the first place. Now the question is… can BART take the load, and will drivers like it so much that when the bridge reopens they’ll still take BART? I predict some, but not the majority.

I dream of a mass transit paradise. This won’t be it. But if this experience causes 50% of local drivers to switch to BART every time they want to cross that part of the Bay and leave their cars behind, Urban planners and CALTRANS would be forced for the first time to give Mass Transit equal footing to the automobile.

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