Great piece. As a native of Oakland, I appreciated the historic context of how BART bypassed communities of color and greatly contributed to the widening economic and social gap between much of the city and its surrounding suburbs.
Why does every question have to be forced into the simplistic narrative of "racism against black and brown people?" When the BART system was conceived in the late 1950s and designed in the very early 1960s most of Oakland was still very much a majority white city. BART definitely skipped over opportunities for stations that seem obvious today to ease a far flung suburban commute into San Francisco but the put that at the feet of racism is an overstatement. Does Albany not having a BART station at Solano Avenue come from racism? Are the gargantuan distances between stations south of Fruitvale a result of racism? Is the lack of a station at 30th Ave in San Francisco come from racism?
Get the developer of the basin to fund the station (permissions to develop should have been conditional on building the station, but hey we are where we are).
Similar example in London: Brent Cross West. Which got it's station this year (costing nearly £500m due to a lot of high speed track shuffling needed, and passive provision for a potential new orbital line). Meridian Water also. The one that has eluded permission: Beam Park.
This would've been the ideal outcome — more like what happened at NoMa station in DC. It's possible there could still be a mechanism for the Brooklyn Basin developer to contribute funding, but it will be harder since that project is already fully approved. There aren't existing models to look to, at least that I know of.
Great piece. As a native of Oakland, I appreciated the historic context of how BART bypassed communities of color and greatly contributed to the widening economic and social gap between much of the city and its surrounding suburbs.
Makes a lot of sense. Thanks for posting, Benjamin.
Why does every question have to be forced into the simplistic narrative of "racism against black and brown people?" When the BART system was conceived in the late 1950s and designed in the very early 1960s most of Oakland was still very much a majority white city. BART definitely skipped over opportunities for stations that seem obvious today to ease a far flung suburban commute into San Francisco but the put that at the feet of racism is an overstatement. Does Albany not having a BART station at Solano Avenue come from racism? Are the gargantuan distances between stations south of Fruitvale a result of racism? Is the lack of a station at 30th Ave in San Francisco come from racism?
Get the developer of the basin to fund the station (permissions to develop should have been conditional on building the station, but hey we are where we are).
Similar example in London: Brent Cross West. Which got it's station this year (costing nearly £500m due to a lot of high speed track shuffling needed, and passive provision for a potential new orbital line). Meridian Water also. The one that has eluded permission: Beam Park.
This would've been the ideal outcome — more like what happened at NoMa station in DC. It's possible there could still be a mechanism for the Brooklyn Basin developer to contribute funding, but it will be harder since that project is already fully approved. There aren't existing models to look to, at least that I know of.