Jul 8, 2009 8:48 pm US/Pacific
Future Of BART Oakland Airport Connector Debated
OAKLAND (CBS 5 / KCBS / BCN) ―
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Passengers wait at Oakland International Airport.
AP
The controversial and expensive Bay Area Rapid Transit connector between the Oakland Coliseum and Oakland Airport may not happen.
The commission that doles out money for such huge projects will vote in a couple of weeks on whether to proceed with the $522 million project, which has created much controversy because of its cost.
On Wednesday, former state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata called on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission not to approve regional funding for the plan to build a 3.2-mile elevated tramway between BART's Coliseum station and the airport.
Speaking at a news conference prior to an MTC Program and Allocations Committee hearing on the issue, Perata said, "I'm asking the MTC to reconsider this project and re-use the money in a thoughtful way" for other public transit projects.
Perata, whose term in the state Senate ended last December and who is running for mayor of Oakland next year, authored a 2004 regional ballot measure that included the funding for the airport connector, but said Wednesday that "the world has radically changed" since then.
Perata said the estimated cost of the project had quadrupled and the estimated daily ridership has plummeted from 13,450 people to about 4,500.
Stuart Cohen of TransForm, an Oakland-based public transit advocacy group, joined Perata at the news conference, saying he thought it would be more prudent to develop a rapid bus service from the Coliseum station to the airport because that would only cost between $45 million and $60 million.
Cohen said the projected number of riders had dropped because the estimated one-way fare has tripled from $2 to $6, intermediate stops on the route have been taken out and the time savings are less than originally predicted.
However, BART board president Thomas Blalock said that he still supported having the elevated tramway, saying, "It takes people of vision to build the systems we need."
Blalock said he thought the elevated tramway would be faster than a bus system because the tramway ride would only take 9 minutes each way and trains would run every 4.5 minutes.
But Blalock admitted that the estimated $6 cost for a one-way ride on the tramway would discourage some people from using the system.
TransForm spokeswoman Rebecca Saltzman said the MTC had authority over $140 million in funding for the project, including $70 million in federal stimulus funds.
The project is scheduled to go to the full MTC board on July 22 for a final vote, although it was sent to them Wednesday by the Program and Allocations Committee without a recommendation.
Saltzman said TransForm wanted the final vote postponed until September so that there would be more time to study alternatives to the elevated tramway.
BART directors approved the airport connector plan in a 7-1 vote on May 14. Their plan calls for borrowing up to $150 million from the federal government.
Another projected funding source is to raise $44 million by taxing airplane tickets for flights in and out of Oakland's airport.
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Bay City News contributed to this report.)
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