It would take decades of work and billions of dollars to become a reality. But if it does, this is the map planners say would revolutionize how people get around the Bay Area.
Drawn up by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute for a report released Wednesday, the map shows more than a dozen ideas to improve rail service and connect residents across the Northern California “megaregion” with frequent, reliable public transportation.
At the heart of the concept: A second rail crossing between San Francisco and Oakland, carrying BART and other regional train lines and giving the system enough capacity to deliver huge crowds of riders into the region’s core.
All of this planning falls under a newprogram also announced Wednesday called Link21, which envisions a slate of projects to improve rail service within and beyond the Bay Area and is the result of a partnership between BART and the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority. It’s named for the 21 counties that make up the megaregion, a term the Bay Area Council coined for the massive and economically inter-connected area we call home.
Coronavirus has thrown the immediate future for train service in the Bay Area into disarray, but the planning in Link21 looks out far into the future, when the pandemic will be a distant memory and millions more people are expected to settle in Northern California.
“Cities are not going to disappear,” said Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. “The ability to move around is still necessary for the economy to function.”
Building another route across the bay is the kind of massive infrastructure project that has been talked about for decades. Wednesday’s announcement amounts to just an early step toward that vision, which under one timeline Link21 provided could involve construction near the end of this decade and service in 2040. Specifics such as where exactly the line would go are a long way from being decided.
The second crossing would relieve the packed trains that were a daily pre-pandemic reality for thousands of BART riders traveling through the Transbay Tube at rush hour, which planners say will get worse over the years as the economy recovers and the Bay Area grows. A second crossing could make other long-held BART rider dreams a possibility, such as 24-hour service or even a new line to the west side of San Francisco.
If the crossing can handle traditional commuter rail systems such as Capitol Corridor — a big if, since that would require two sets of train tracks because of BART’s unique design — riders could take a “one-seat” trip from Sacramento to San Francisco.
The vision outlined in Bellisario’s report also substantially increases service on “inter-city rail” lines, such as Capitol Corridor or Altamont Corridor Express, that critics say run too slowly and infrequently.
“We don’t have the frequencies or speed to really compete with car travel,” Bellisario said. “You don’t want to just create a system where everyone is driving around and that’s the only way to do it.”
And it folds in other visions for extending or adding new lines, including the state’s High Speed Rail project, the proposed Valley Link line connecting Stockton with BART in Dublin, a Dumbarton crossing to link southern Alameda County with the Peninsula and even a new route across the North Bay tying Marin, Sonoma and Napa counties with Capitol Corridor.
The next step is a whole lot more discussions. The Bay Area Council will hold a webinar Feb. 4 to discuss its report. And the Link21 project is taking public feedback on its plans through this survey.
