Ruth: There is $70 million of stimulus funds coming to BART for this project, which is what prompted them to revive their train-in-the-sky plans, which had previously been put on hold due to lack of funding. Apparently they figured, “Hey, if we can get $70m from the Feds for this, why not borrow the rest and make our passengers eat the cost?” And it’s important to point out that if BART does NOT build their train-in-the-sky, then the 70m does not go back to Washington—it stays in this region and gets divvied up among the various transit agencies (BART would get 15m). So the argument that they have to build the train-in-the-sky in order to keep those stimulus funds here doesn’t apply.

People should keep pointing out not only that this plan is being put forward at the wrong time (or are they counting on stimulus dollars?), but their goal of greater efficiency is not met when they intend to drop people to find their own way to individual terminals. That’s where buses have it over trains no matter how we all love the latter.

$6 might seem inconsequential for a lot of travellers, but as I said in the post, if you are trying to decide between a cab, a door-to-door shuttle, or public transit, then making the public transit ride 2 to 4 times as expensive as it would have been is a real disincentive. People don’t make decisions in vacuums—they choose between different options. (Which reminds me of something I forgot to discuss in the post, which is the opportunity costs involved in this project. The BART directors keep talking about how it will create jobs. Well, yes, but it also would have created jobs to extend BART deeper into the East Bay to serve commuters from Livermore, or to extend BART further toward San Jose, or to…you get the point. The question isn’t just whether this project is worth the money, but whether this project is a better use of the money than other possible uses.)

And lastly, I don’t want to debate the nitty gritty of this ad nauseam, but comparing a BART extension that goes all the way to SFO’s international terminal with the OAC is apples to oranges. Of course the BART extension to SFO (at a marginal increase in fare) is enormously preferable for travelers over a shuttle bus from Daly City (or a SamTrans bus from downtown, which is what I used to do sometimes). But if the shuttle bus from Daly City had been replaced by an elevated people mover from Daly City, requiring people to transfer AND pay a whopping 6 dollars for the privilege, then I don’t think ridership would have increased so dramatically.

I agree that some people will probably hear the word “bus” and be reluctant to use BART. On the other hand, the reason they had to raise AirBART’s fare to $3 a couple of years ago was that ridership was higher than projected, so they had to increase the number of buses, and ultimately replace the aging fleet, in order to meet the demand. If a rapid bus was faster, had hassle-free boarding, and was totally free, then ridership would surely go up even further. And it’s important to remember that the question isn’t whether we think a people mover would be better than RapidBART. The question is whether people mover would be so much better than RapidBART that it justifies paying 10 times the money for it on the front end (burdening BART with $150m in debt when it is already struggling fiscally) and costing riders $6 instead of being free.

I can understand why people would prefer to ride an elevated people mover instead of a bus on city streets. I might actually prefer it myself, if the costs were identical. But I honestly can’t understand why people think that the people mover will be so much better that it justifies the high cost to BART and to individual passengers.

I’ve had good experiences with the people movers at JFK and SFO too, but the AirTrain at JFK costs (if I’m remembering correctly) $5, and if there were a free shuttle bus right next to it making the same route at close to the same speed, don’t you think most people would opt for the free bus instead of the $5 train? And I don’t see the parallels between the SFO people mover and the OAC. For one thing, SFO’s people mover serves all of the terminals and the BART station and long-term parking. And more importantly, SFO’s people mover doesn’t require any fare. I think it’s astonishing that BART wants to charge passengers more just for the shuttle from the BART station to Oakland airport ($6) than they charge for my entire trip from my home in Oakland all the way to SFO, which is already pretty damn expensive ($5.65 from Lake Merritt). One trip is about 3 miles, and the other is about 30.

In any case, this debate may be academic, since the BART board just voted 7-1 to take out the 150 million dollar loan. If they now try to raise fares on transit-dependent Bay Area residents beyond the previously scheduled increase in 2010, pleading fiscal deficits, then I’m going to be seriously pissed off.

PRE: That’s not much of an argument. As I said in the post, I generally like trains better than buses, so if you have any real case for why the elevated people mover will be worth the enormous cost to BART’s budget and to passengers, then I’m open to persuasion, but a generalized slam against “activists” and a silly assertion that the OAC must be better than the rapid bus because it costs so much more isn’t likely to convince anyone.

Seriously, if anyone reading this has a more substantive argument for why the OAC is worth borrowing $150 million and charging passengers 6 bucks for, then I’d love to hear it. The more I hear specious non-arguments like “you get what you pay for,” the more convinced I am that TransForm is correct.