The Failure of “Me First” Transportation Planning

Last Updated: August 25, 2015By

New BART director Nick Josefowitz has written an excellent article outlining the failures of “me first” transportation planning, using as examples ineffective freeway expansions in Orange County and the extension of the BART Fremont Line to Warm Springs, currently under construction.

See http://www.sfexaminer.com/the-failure-of-me-first-transportation-planning/.

The “Money Quote:”

…BART’s historical pattern of investment is a good example. In the past couple decades, the region has built extension after expensive extension on the edge of the system. This December, the latest of these expensive extensions will open in south Fremont near the Santa Clara county line. This new extension cost $890 million to build, and will cost over $12 million annually to operate.

This extension — and many of BART’s other end-of-line extensions — are the Bay Area version of Orange County’s failed freeway widening program. The new station in south Fremont will funnel more and more riders into an already overloaded BART system, without fundamentally increasing the capacity of the core system to accommodate them. Not only will this increase the crowding for those living in Fremont, but for all BART riders throughout the Bay Area…