BART began service in 1972 with a philosophy that Bay Area commuters needed an open seat on a train and free parking if they were going to be lured off the highway.
Today, that philosophy is facing severe challenges, as even a casual BART commuter could tell you. Not only are daily trains packed during peak hours, but paid parking — let alone the free kind — is quickly becoming a thing of the past around BART stations.
In fact, commuter parking has become the most visible casualty of the regulatory battles being waged as the region moves aggressively to alter traveling habits in the face of climate change.
Getting commuters out of their cars and into mass transit remains an admirable goal. But with the housing crunch still pushing people farther and farther from job centers, demand for parking around transit centers remains as strong as ever.
In Walnut Creek, for instance, monthly permits for the long-awaited parking garage near BART sold out in a week, months before the garage even opened, leaving thousands of commuters on waiting lists without options. While the new garage adds 700 monthly spots, the loss of nearby surface parking to housing development means the Walnut Creek BART station will have 678 fewer spots for occasional riders than before.
But the Walnut Creek transit village is actually a best-case scenario for suburban travelers. It, at least, was conceived years ago under old regulations that allowed municipalities to demand replacement of parking spots lost to so-called transit-oriented development.
AB2923, signed into law last year by Gov. Brown, changes the game by giving BART new zoning authority to develop housing on its properties without local influence over parking, building height or density. The agency’s formal goal is for 20,000 new housing units by 2040.
AB2923 makes it impossible for municipalities to demand replacement parking for spots eliminated due to transit development. That was made clear during a recent meeting on the proposed development of the parking lots near the North Concord Station. When the mayor of Concord asked how much parking would be replaced at the BART station, she was told only that “BART will assess the parking and determine the proper replacement parking ratio.”
Car-dependent commuters should be worried, given that suburban representatives on the BART board are currently outnumbered by directors from urban areas, where car ownership is just not a priority.
But simply eliminating parking without providing viable transportation options will not get most commuters off the freeways and onto public transit. Not everyone lives in a city within biking or walking distance of a transit station, and there is currently no robust network of shuttles or buses in Contra Costa County to get people to the trains on time.
Before moving against suburban commuters, BART should work with other transit agencies to develop reliable interconnected networks to get large numbers of users from Point A to Point B more efficiently.
Adequate parking must still be part of any development equation, but instead of surface lots we should build modern garages convertible to other future uses, including housing. We should also incorporate new technologies to ensure residents of Alameda and Contra Costa counties – who support the transit system through their taxes — get priority pricing.
BART has an obligation to address the needs of all its users – it can’t afford otherwise. Simply making life more frustrating for thousands of daily suburban commuters without addressing the underlying transportation issues will only add to the region’s quality-of-life problems.
Debora Allen is a BART Director representing District 1, which stretches through central Contra Costa County from Martinez to San Ramon.