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It seems like every major infrastructure folly, at its heart, simplifies to "Someone made their career espousing a certain worldview, and when facts changed in future decades, were unwilling or unable to change their now-famous beliefs." In this case, car > rail. Which was true and progressive, for a period! Say, 1950 to 1970? But then became false as the growth rate of cars outscaled roads.
"The story goes: Marin County, worried about cost of the extension and engineering concerns of running BART on the Golden Gate Bridge, ultimately backed out of the BART District. Fin." I want to push back on this slightly ... The received wisdom - repeated ad infinitum - among bay area progressives is that Marin County rejected BART based on racist, exclusionary, NIMBY concerns. That is how "the story goes" in these…
Why does the article take so long to explain what BART stands for? Even then, it assumes a lot of prior knowledge. This is one of the reasons I tend to read the comments on articles more than the articles themselves.
"The story goes: Marin County, worried about cost of the extension and engineering concerns of running BART on the Golden Gate Bridge, ultimately backed out of the BART District. Fin." I want to push back on this slightly ... The received wisdom - repeated ad infinitum - among bay area progressives is that Marin County rejected BART based on racist, exclusionary, NIMBY concerns. That is how "the story goes" in these…
"The story goes: Marin County, worried about cost of the extension and engineering concerns of running BART on the Golden Gate Bridge, ultimately backed out of the BART District. Fin." I want to push back on this slightly ... The received wisdom - repeated ad infinitum - among bay area progressives is that Marin County rejected BART based on racist, exclusionary, NIMBY concerns. That is how "the story goes" in these…
The population of Marin County is only 258k, and more like 175k when Bart planning began. Building that line would probably serve more people in SF than in Marin, so it never really made sense.
That’s a bit of a catch-22 because part of the reason the county is isolated and small is because there are few good commuting options to the rest of the bay where most of the work is there. If they added BART there, the potential for adding density would make more sense. Obviously other factors like terrain and NIMBY-ism play roles as well, but you don’t need to reject all rail options within reach of a major metro…
Ferry service from Marin is pretty reasonable during commute times. It's a 30 min ride from Sausalito to SF. Bart from Marin to FiDi probably would be similar, just with more frequent trains.
It seems like every major infrastructure folly, at its heart, simplifies to "Someone made their career espousing a certain worldview, and when facts changed in future decades, were unwilling or unable to change their now-famous beliefs." In this case, car > rail. Which was true and progressive, for a period! Say, 1950 to 1970? But then became false as the growth rate of cars outscaled roads.
> car > rail. Which was true and progressive, for a period! Say, 1950 to 1970? What does “true and progressive” mean? The freeway expansions of the mid 20th century cutting through city centers were disastrous all over the USA, right from the start. Horrible for urban society, economy, equity, ... Thankfully San Francisco was never turned into https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~2... Great for…
Also from the article: "A widespread misconception exists that well-functioning streetcar systems were intentionally put out of business by a conspiratorial alliance of tire and auto manufacturers in the 1940s and 1950s…In reality, many streetcar companies were never reliably profitable, and they suffered from overcapitalization, inadequate maintenance, and poor service". In comparison to that, all these cheap and reliable "rubber tires" vehicles probably seemed pretty progressive.
Of course, knowing what we know now, it's easy to see how incredibly short sighted this was. I sure wish we hadn't ripped out all those rail lines.
"The story goes: Marin County, worried about cost of the extension and engineering concerns of running BART on the Golden Gate Bridge, ultimately backed out of the BART District. Fin." I want to push back on this slightly ... The received wisdom - repeated ad infinitum - among bay area progressives is that Marin County rejected BART based on racist, exclusionary, NIMBY concerns. That is how "the story goes" in these…
Mildly interesting; the main bridge in Lisbon, Portugal (Ponte de 25 abril) was built by the same company as the golden gate bridge and looks almost identical. It had a railway added in 1999 underneath.
I don't think this is true, according to Wikipedia, the Golden Gate Bridge was build by McClintic-Marshall, and the Ponte de 25 abril by the American Bridge Company [0]. You might be confusing this with the Bay Bridge [1], which was build by the same company and also had rail service until 1963.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bridge_Company
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland_...