California State Senator Aisha Wahab is taking BART to task, arguing the agency failed to pursue available state transportation funding for the Irvington BART station through the Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program (TIRCP).
The funds come in grants from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction fund with an ultimate goal to reduce greenhouse gases, miles traveled and congestion.
Wahab said during a phone interview that an Irvington station would benefit the community. “I think that there’s a lot of people that will say that they care about public transit, that they care about the environment, that they want a more robust system. And they will utilize it if it’s there. Right now we are trying to create that system for Irvington.”
Wahab said BART should apply for the TIRCP funds now. “It is just poor management when you are talking about money on the table, facing a fiscal crisis and not applying,” she said. “That is the basic function of what they should be doing if they want more money for the projects, rather than cutting operations and services to regular people.”
BART is currently facing a fiscal crisis, and has put a revenue measure on the ballot this November. A Feb. 12 BART board meeting staff report says they have prepared a plan to cut services to 10 stations if the measure doesn’t pass. Those stations include South Hayward, Warm Springs, West Dublin/Pleasanton and Oakland International Airport, which are considered to have low ridership numbers.
Plans for the Irvington station were approved in 1992. Partial funds for the station come from Alameda County’s Measure BB, approved by voters in 2014. The money was used for county-wide transportation improvements including the expansion of BART. Alameda County Transportation Commission named Irvington BART station as one of Measure BB’s investments.
Fremont Mayor Raj Salwan said via phone interview the Irvington station is part of a Transit-Oriented-Development (TOD), which is meant to connect housing to public transportation.
“We have the development, but we don’t have the transit. It kind of defeats the purpose,” said Salwan. “The whole purpose is to link housing and transit so that people can live near the transit. Then they can go from their apartment or home, get on BART, go to work without having to drive on the streets and create greenhouse gasses, so it’s much more efficient, and that’s where all the future growth is going to be. This BART project is crucial.”
BART director Liz Ames said on Feb. 5 BART would need the operational costs to run the station. “There’s a lot of uncertainty about BART’s operational needs and how we’re going to pay for them. How are we going to pay for operating costs? We’re on the edge of deciding, ‘okay, are we going to be cutting stations?’ Potentially, we’re going to hear about this next week,” Ames said, referring to their board meeting on Feb.12.
Salwan said the Irvington station design is nearly complete and is urging BART to apply for TIRCP funding. “We feel very comfortable that if they move this forward, that this will compete very well, because this is a very good project,” he said. “We already have the tracks in place. When we took BART to Warm Springs, we already had the tracks laid. All we need to do is drop the station.”
Ames said Fremont has to complete the land acquisition process before BART applies for TIRCP funding for the Irvington station. “You can’t complete the design unless you have the right of way sorted out,” she said. “So the properties that are involved to build the station really need to be in place.”
She continued, “The right of way piece really needs to be put in place, and all of the land acquisitions need to happen before you go into construction documents. It’s premature to say, ‘Okay, we’re going to do all this design and even the construction documents,’ if you don’t have the real estate, the property ownership.”
