2 posts tagged “bay area”
Jim Cunradi gave a presentation on how the project he is managing—Bus Rapid Transit—is progressing. At this stage, it is about half-way through the planning process, and the draft environmental impact report is now open for public comment. It is hoped to be operational in 2011.
Bus Rapid Transit is a way to move more people more quickly by having dedicated bus lanes in the centre of the street next to a median strip with boarding platforms that have ticket vending machines and which are flush with the floor of the bus. People can board and disembark more quickly and easily, shortening the time spent at each stop. The stops are further apart, and traffic signals respond to the approach of a Rapid Transit bus by turning or staying green.
The next speaker was BART Board President, Lynette Sweet, on the topic of transit-oriented developments, which combine living and retail spaces near to BART stations. That morning’s San Francisco Chronicle had included an article by its architecture critic panning one of those developments, which somewhat dampened the effect of the nice photographs in the handout we were given. Sweet acknowledged that along the way, they’ve learned some lessons.
[Caption:] Stuart Cohen, Executive Director of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition, relies on a sidekick and some boxes to create a bar graph of household costs in the Bay Area. Here, he is illustrating how a significant chunk of household income could be saved by not owning a car. TALC was one of the co-sponsors of the event.
The star of the show was absolutely the economist and former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, Enrique Penalosa. During his time as mayor, the city spent money that had originally been earmarked for yet more motorways on miles and miles of pedestrian walkways, cycle paths, parks and plazas instead. If you can’t provide your citizens with equality of income, he said, you should at least provide them with equality in the quality of their experience of the city.
I have a thing for brushed metal. I like it in tea kettles. I like it in sinks. And as I held my brand new brushed metal toy in my hand on BART this week, I realized that part of the thing I have for BART is those brushed metal passenger cars.
Did you know they were chosen by IDSA (Industrial Designers of America) as the 1972 entry for 100 design greats ? In the sixty years since the last mass transit system had been built--1907, Philadelphia--the U.S. had begun a Space Race with the Soviet Union, and the new line was able to take advantage of technological advances such as the ability to extrude 70-foot sections of aluminum, new construction materials, and sophisticated electronics.
To travel to the spaghetti-land of the BART approach of SFO is to see made real those visions of the future that garish science fiction magazines of the Forties specialized in: The dinky automated train that takes passengers from the international to the national terminals, the clean rotund lines of the concrete supports for the tracks that it and BART travel on, the power pylons and cellphone towers. The only jarring note to that fantasy is the jam-packed highway below, with its cloud of retro gas fumes.
The vision
BART leadership defined an aggressive and clear mission for the project: It must capitalize on technology that made possible the burgeoning space age. And it must address both the present and future, thus putting a premium on creativity and forward thinking. BART represented a salvation of sorts for the Bay Area. Experts agree that the new BART Mass transit system saved the region from strangulation by traffic and congestion--and making economic vitality and growth possible in the Bay Area by facilitating speedy travel to/from the core of its cities.
The above quote is taken from the booklet that was published when BART was named an Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1997. Eight pages of the slim booklet are devoted to the various innovations introduced by BART and copied around the world.
The hope
But my favorite quote in that booklet is one from the first president of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, Adrien Falk--the "grand old man of the San Francisco municipal scene" who at 80 years old spent "every working day on a young man's project, the most futuristic of all civic enterprises," according to an Examiner article in 1964, the year that President Johnson officiated at the ground-breaking at BART's Diablo Test Site.
What drove Falk wasn't just the engineering possibilities or the bolstering of the local economy. He wanted "to give people more time for leisure, more time to be with their families, to enable them to be non-neurotic in this neurotic age."
Where did we lose you?
Setting aside any neurosis you might incur looking at the new posters in the system about being aware of your surroundings and looking out for suspicious behaviour, or from peering out the window--as a fellow passenger recently told me he does--for leaks in the TransBay Tube as you travel through it, BART really is an antidote to neurosis.
But if you're neurotic about catching germs or having to interact with people from a different cultural milieu than you're used to, then BART is probably not for you either. As for me? I was brought up to think that exposure to germs is what gives you immunity from them, and exposure to other cultures is what makes you a well-rounded human being.
My only regret, traveling on BART, is that every day I think what a waste it is that it's me sitting there instead of Leonardo da Vinci, because it's only his sketchbook that could do justice to the marvelous variety of humanity I keep company with, if only fleetingly.
Why you should join us
Mass transit is one of those things that set us apart from animals--a cooperative venture that benefits all those who participate in it, and even those who don't (by taking traffic off the road). It benefits not just the group, but the individual because of the savings you make using it, as this calculator from the San Mateo Transit District clearly demonstrates.
And instead of sitting in traffic, you can read the latest magazine, your book, the paper, do that homework or read that lengthy memo, listen to music, watch videos on your portable DVD player, or even have a nap. Try doing that in a car and you turn yourself into a menace.
It's a mystery to me why more people don't take transit on days when they are basically just taking their car into their workplace to leave it sitting there and then driving it straight home again. And as for driving round and round for forty minutes looking for a parking place in the evenings, why not take BART instead? Many venues even offer discounted admission prices to BART riders.
There is an excellent trip planner at 511.org to make it even easier for you if you have connections to make to other transit providers.
Go on, give it a go! Live like the 21st century has actually arrived!
(First posted at Bayosphere on 9/17/2005.)
