BART, Josefowitz, and Mass Transit in the Bay

Last week, Nick Josefowitz unseated a multi-decade incumbent for a spot on the BART board of directors. Normally I don’t pay too much attention to elections, but Mr. Josefowitz might actually have some good ideas.

For everyone outside the Bay Area, the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system is a commuter rail line that constitutes the vital transportation link between the East Bay and San Francisco. On a typical weekday it provides 400,000 rides and that number is increasing as the regional economy continues to boom. Suffice it to say that BART is a big deal to a lot of people who rely on it every day (myself included).

While Josefowitz’s campaign website talks about cleaning up dirty stations and increasing late night train availability, I had the privilege of hearing him outline an interesting proposal during a private, small group discussion some months ago.

According to Josefowitz, BART sits on a substantial amount of real estate in the form of station parking lots. His proposal was to repurpose some of this space as high density housing. This would help with the region’s housing shortage and support BART ridership by clustering population around the system’s stations and the lost spots could be offset by building parking structures on the remaining lot space (many BART parking lots are ground level only as opposed to multi-level parking structures). This sounded a lot like Hong Kong’s integrated rail-property development approach which has proven to be an unqualified success, so my interest was definitely piqued.

As always, there’s plenty of which to be skeptical. The fact that the proposal was brought up in a private discussion, but isn’t listed on the campaign website may say something about where it falls in Josefowitz’s priorities. Also, it’s difficult to tell how effective the incoming director will be in pitching new ideas to the incumbent directors on the board. And finally, any plan to build housing on BART property will be sure to include some kind of “affordable” housing requirement, the beneficial effects of which remain questionable to say the least.

But, if Josefowitz is serious about the proposal and he manages to find support amongst the other members of the board, it could be a step in the right direction. More housing would be better than less in the supply constrained Bay Area and allowing for greater density around BART’s stations could contribute to a more sustainable regional transit system.

For the record, I did not vote in this election and this post does not equate to a political endorsement of any kind.