Friday, May 31, 2013

Today's BART TransBay Tube delays cries out to restart planning to bring BART Around The Bay...up the Peninsula ... the last 28 miles from coming future end at Santa Clara University to current Millbrae station.  Imagine the HUGE benefits of the "one-seat" (no transfers) BART to any major Bay Area venue, employment centers. BART is safer, more frequent, no cross-traffic congestion, electrified already (it is Stupid to electrify 15 miles of the deadly Caltrain parallel to BART's existing track north of Millbrae into The City and TBTerminal. Save $$$, too and eliminate Dumbarton Rail & its supports in the Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge (more on my BARTAROUNDTHEBAY blogspot.).  This a.m.'s TBTube problems would have been mitigated by BART travel south (Richmond->Fremont->future SJ/SC-then up the last 28 miles to Millbrae) for the bidirectional, redundant BART flow capability. One intra-regional arterial rail system that balances backbone heavy transit needs with green electric BART.

Today's issues with the BART Tube accident, which required 300 feet+ of BART third rail repair, as well as with other BART maintenance and incident recovery needs provide another set of key reasons for the urgency of having BART Around The Bay.
This reason is in addition to greatly reducing the 1 to 1.5 consistent and predictable Caltrain track deaths by accidents and easy suicides each month that severely delay Peninsula commuters that my blog has addressed, but Bay Area Democrats could not care less.  Democrat Bay Area monopoly and its dogma has so far prevented replacing Caltrain with the logical inter-regional reach and efficiencies and environmental benefits of One Bay Area BART!

Rail funding is easier to obtain to close a major regional rail gap (over time), than a New Start or Rail Extension.  BART is fundable at the current cost per mile, of about $200M/per mile through suburban environs, and, depending on each city agreement with BART, up to $400M per mile through the most dense urban downtown passages (Burlingame, San Mateo, Menlo Park, and possibly Palo Alto (to save the Palo Alto tree University-Alma area).  

Certainly if the funds allocated to the HSR waste and fraudulent project can be redirected from the outdated Caltrain Killtrain, then the monies can certainly provide real, urban, backbone intraregional rail mass transit redundancy for not only the current 500,000+ daily riders on BART, but the more than 50,000 Caltrain riders induced by the unified BART gap closure around the Bay, especially with new BART cars et al.

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