I Dream of BART

I have a serious problem, and it’s called subway envy.

Look at these stations! They look clean and modern! And although you can’t see it from the photos, you probably won’t wait longer than five minutes for a train. But what engenders envy in me much more than that is a sight much more beautiful: the subway system map.

That’s Taipei, Tokyo, and Beijing. Now let’s see the BART, just for comparison.

😒😒😒

And I know, I know. The Bay Area has a much smaller population than Beijing or Tokyo. But honestly? Not that much different. Hear me out!

Beijing and Tokyo have much higher populations than the Bay Area, true, but the Bay Area still has a proportionally small subway. It even has a larger population than Taipei, but fewer than half of the subway stations! Now again, one could argue that Tokyo, Beijing, and Taipei have higher population densities, and are thus better suited to subway systems. And that does appear to be somewhat true (although Taipei seems to have a similar population density to the Bay Area). But the definition of the Bay Area that we are using includes a lot of sparsely populated land in Napa and Sonoma Counties.

If we exclude Napa and Sonoma counties from our definition of “The Bay Area,” then we see the Bay Area’s population density significantly higher than Taipei, and not that far off from Tokyo. The fact is, the BART used to be a shining example of cutting-edge public transit, and now it’s a bit of an embarrassment. So I thought to myself, what would the BART look like if it had the updated technology and increased coverage of a place like Tokyo or Beijing? What would the BART look like in my dreams?

Where should the stations go?

Ideally, subway stations should be situated in locations with high population density and limited existing access to public transit. So let’s map those locations: what blocks in the Bay Area are more than a half mile from an existing BART station but have above-average population density?

Somewhat predictably, San Francisco has the highest concentration of high population density blocks. It also has a fairly robust Muni system, so when we zoom in to look at individual counties, we will count potential spots for new BART stations as census blocks with greater than 1.5 SD population density and that is more than 1600 meters away from any public transit within San Francisco. Outside of San Francisco, potential spots will be any census block with above average population density that is more than 1600 meters away form a BART station (not just any public transit).

Looking at the map, we see some census blocks that appear to include a BART station still being flagged. This is likely because to calculate distance to transit we counted the distance from the centroid of the block to transit, so some census block centroids might be far from a station even if their borders abut it.

In San Francisco, the main areas that seem to need more transit are the Mission, Balboa Park, Richmond, and a swathe of area north Market and to the east.

Other than the city/county of San Francisco, the other counties that seem to be worth zooming in on are Santa Clara, Alameda, and San Mateo.

In Santa Clara, stops in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Campbell, downtown San Jose, East San Jose, and Alum Rock seem to make sense.

In Alameda County, it looks like Berkeley could use another station closer to the university. Oakland would also benefit from more frequent stops between 580 and 880 all the way to the Oakland Zoo. More stops in Fremont and between Hayward and Union City would also be beneficial.

The continuation of the BART into the South Bay could follow a natural progression, from Millbrae to Burlingame, then to Foster City, Redwood City, and East Palo Alto.

When I have some more time, I want to make a beautiful map with named stops, organized lines—the whole shebang. But for now I’ll share this map of proposed new stops.

Ahhh. Just look at that. Imagine taking the BART all the way to Mountain View! Or even going to the beach in Alameda!

Deep exhale Maybe one day… For now, this BART remains only in my dreams