San Jose BART Will Not Relieve Congestion

In preparation for my lecture in San Jose last week, I took a look at the environmental impact report for the proposed BART extension to San Jose. Even though rail advocates are telling people BART will take two freeway lanes’ worth of people off the roads, I was not surprised to find that, in fact, BART will do absolutely nothing to relieve peak-hour congestion.

Chapter 4.2 of the environmental impact report compares peak-hour traffic in 2030 with and without BART on all major freeways in the region. Without BART, these freeways are expected to carry an average of nearly 10,000 cars per hour. If BART is built, the report projects that it will take an average of 59 cars per hour off the freeways.

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Even a 7 percent reduction is not enough to relieve congestion. The report projected freeway speeds on each of 96 different freeway segments with and without BART. In every single case, the speed with BART was exactly the same — not a single mile per hour more — as without BART.

So why does anyone want to build BART? As with the streetcar mania that is being spread by former Portland city commissioner Charles Hales, the real goal for BART seems to be economic development. San Jose is already rezoning planned BART stations for much higher densities — as much as 100,000 people per square mile (by comparison, Manhattan is only about 60,000 people per square mile). The city doesn’t seem to have considered whether anyone would want to live at such densities in a state that is nearly 95 percent rural open space.

In any case, anyone who says that building a BART line to San Jose will reduce peak-hour congestion is lying. Until last week, few people knew that because hardly anyone seems to have actually read the environmental impact report. I hope my visit will begin to change that.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

7 Responses to San Jose BART Will Not Relieve Congestion

  1. Tad Winiecki says:

    No surprise, Randall.
    When Westside MAX started operating from Portland to Hillsboro the only measurable effect on traffic on Highway 26 was reduction in the number of express buses.

  2. D4P says:

    “San Jose is already rezoning planned BART stations for much higher densities — as much as 100,000 people per square mile (by comparison, Manhattan is only about 60,000 people per square mile). The city doesn’t seem to have considered whether anyone would want to live at such densities in a state that is nearly 95 percent rural open space”

    What percent of the state of New York is “rural open space”? I’m guessing it’s pretty high (maybe not 95%, as New York doesn’t have nearly as much desert as California does), yet plenty of people live in New York City at high densities.

  3. Dan says:

    San Jose is already rezoning planned BART stations for much higher densities — as much as 100,000 people per square mile (by comparison, Manhattan is only about 60,000 people per square mile). The city doesn’t seem to have considered whether anyone would want to live at such densities in a state that is nearly 95 percent rural open space.

    Oooh! Scaaary numbers! Everyone run in fear! Run!

    Less misleading – and of course we can’t check for ourselves because there’s no link, reference, citation or anything else – is the total planned housing units (is it 100? 1,000? How come we’re not told? Is it because 500 housing units isn’t scaaary?)

    More helpful would be the market demand for such units in the area (intrepid readers can read Cervero’s work for a clue). Even more helpful would be for Randal to point out how much of the state is desert, mountain, farmland so readers can have context to his scaaaaary numbers.

    DS

  4. Dan says:

    Chapter 4.2 of the environmental impact report compares peak-hour traffic in 2030 with and without BART on all major freeways in the region. Without BART, these freeways are expected to carry an average of nearly 10,000 cars per hour. If BART is built, the report projects that it will take an average of 59 cars per hour off the freeways.

    Of course if we read the doc for ourselves rather than trust what an advocate regurgitates for us, we find that the report also states that commute time will be reduced if the extension project gets built (tbl 4.2-11 pg 15, [69,000 hours, provided roadway improvement money is found]), and the report states that on the majority of segments studied, installing the project will reduce the volume and density of that segment, e.g. I-880 Brokaw to Montague, US101 Oakland ti I-880, I680 McKee to Alum Rock, etc (tbl 4.2-12, pp. 26-29). So, again, we see it is best to read the info for yourself.

    Regardless, auto congestion will get worse, unless someone waves their magic wand and makes it easier for Agencies to purchase ROW to make a massive takings of people’s land to build new roads. Folks by that time will likely want choices in their transporation mode, just to save the enamel on their teeth.

    DS

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