Word: barts
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...from the state, a locally imposed sales tax and federal funds kept the ambitious project alive. The long years of construction were marked by lawsuits, as well as by a succession of knotty technical problems and press charges of waste and incompetence. There were times when it seemed that BART might be abandoned...
...BART works as expected, it will cut travel times by anywhere from 30% to 80%. For example, the trip from Oakland to San Francisco will take nine minutes, compared with 35 to 45 minutes by car in rush-hour traffic via the Bay Bridge...
Side Benefits. BART'S promise has sparked a $1 billion office-building boom in downtown San Francisco, plus a major beautification program the length of Market Street. In the suburbs, new homes and apartments are sprouting near the system's stations, and land values have been rising steadily along its route. Whether BART will in fact realize its planners' original far-reaching goals is still moot, mainly because the system is so much shorter than first planned. "We would like to think we've been a catalyst for good things," says Dahms...
Another side benefit is aesthetic. BART's 34 stations are designed to be bright and appealing-quite a change from the usual dreary transit stop. The main station at Lake Merritt even has a pool and a plaza. About a third of its extra-wide tracks will be underground and out of sight. Another third will use freeway medians, and the rest will be elevated on graceful concrete columns. BART has spent $7.5 million on landscaping alone...
...crucial issue, of course, is whether enough people will ride the lines. BART is expected to pay its own way. (One reason for all the space-age automation was to minimize the labor costs that account for about 80% of the costs of the East Coast's deficit-ridden transit systems.) Projections for 1975 predict 200,000 riders on weekdays, or 60 million a year. This would account for 11 % of the present commuting traffic. But a telephone survey indicated that only 7% of those questioned intend to use the system once it goes into operation...