BART to Livermore in Jeopardy as Developers Work to Derail Project
After many years of deliberation and environmental impact studies, the BART to Livermore project seems finally ready to start the first leg in a decade-long journey to bringing high-speed public transportation to the eastern periphery of Alameda County. As approved, BART is hoping to build a subway station in Downtown Livermore and another station that connects to the ACE train at Vasco Road. This option makes the most sense given the burgeoning popularity of Downtown Livermore’s many attractions, including the Bankhead Theater and the recently approved 2,000-seat regional theater right next to the Bankhead. In addition, the proposed Vasco Road station will be close to the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Sandia Lab, and the Tri-Valley Innovation Hub. The Vasco Road station would also alleviate some of the congestion at the East Dublin BART station and be a godsend for commuters living in the Central Valley.
Unfortunately, not all Livermore developers and residents are pleased with BART’s decision to open stations in Downtown Livermore and at Vasco Road. The “Keep BART on 580” group is advocating for an option to build the Livermore stations at Isabel Road and Greenville Road. Proponents of this alternative route have cited many reasons to support the I-580-only route including time savings and a reduced project cost. If the alternative route is approved, the overall cost of the BART extension would drop from $3.83B to $3.15B.
The “Keep BART on 580″ backers may have a more compelling motive than time and cost savings. The BART and federal grant guidelines require cities to authorize construction for housing near new BART stations. The Downtown Livermore/Vasco Road extension option would require about 1,500 new homes to be built near the stations; however, the Greenville Road and Isabel Road option would mandate the construction of nearly 6,500 more homes in North Livermore along the I-580 corridor. Developers funding the “Keep BART on 580″ outreach could be looking at the Isabel/Greenville option as the Trojan horse to usher in a tsunami of new home construction in protected land use areas.
Both BART to Livermore options face many hurdles. The Downtown Livermore/Vasco Road option would require BART to bore underneath the future Staples Ranch in Pleasanton and areas near the Paragon Outlet Mall in Livermore to reach the Downtown Livermore subway station. The Isabel/Greenville Road option would have a challenge with the Livermore airport commission, zoning restrictions, and a dearth of federal funding for construction. The hurdles for the Isabel/Greenville Road option may be too great to overcome and could ultimately derail the BART to Livermore movement for yet another generation.
For additional information regarding the BART to Livermore project, please contact Malcolm Quint at info@barttolivermore.org.
7:43 AM on May 17th, 2011
I smell AstroTurf!
9:27 AM on May 17th, 2011
The numbers given in this article are not accurate. If you are going to give numbers of additional dwelling units needed, then compare apples to apples. The 1500 new homes needed at Downtown/Vasco are on top of the many additional units in the General Plan that have NOT been built. The actual number is closer to a total of 3500 new units needed Downtown (plus about 750 at Vasco) to meet the requirements (with little room to expand the downtown infrastructure).
If you are eliminating the unbuilt units in the General Plan (as the author did) and ONLY counting those units needed in addition to those not yet built from the General Plan, then you’d better eliminate the 3971 new units approved in the General Plan that are designated for BART at Greenville. Using the author’s methodology, that leaves only 2529 new units for Greenville/Isabel. So its either about 1500 Downtown/Vasco and about 2500 for Greenville/Isabel if you are talking new units in addition to those approved in the General Plan, or it’s over 4000 for Downtown/Vasco and about 6500 for Greenville/Isabel if you are talking additional new units including those already approved in the General Plan.
10:55 AM on May 17th, 2011
We need to keep BART on 580. It’s the cheapest and most convenient for people commuting from Tracy and beyond. Let’s just get the Isabel Station built so we can get Central Valley commuters out of the Dublin stretch of 580.
1:29 PM on May 17th, 2011
It seems like the “Keep BART on 580″ folks have a rebuttal to the home #s argument on their site (similar to the second 2 post here). I would guess it was up there before this article was posted. Is there any real evidence that “Keep BART on 580″ is secretly a developer fronted organization? I actually would be very surprised if this was Astro Turf – this would be a very convoluted method for an evil developer to usurp protected land.
The hurdles for both options seem pretty daunting to me. I don’t have a horse in the race, but I will admit the downtown plan strikes me as a bit bizarre. Hopefully Livermore residents will get a chance to vote on the issue.
4:18 PM on May 17th, 2011
I wrote the second comment because I keep seeing writers offer misleading numbers. I am middle aged, own my home and have been in Livermore more than a thirty years. I don’t know any developers, but I see BART and it’s housing completely changing our downtown in a way that worries me, as well as BART through Livermore negatively impacting many neighborhoods as trains pass near homes where families did not choose to live in a transit village so close to the tracks that their quality of life will be impacted. For me, this has nothing to do with developer money – it has to do with quality of life.
4:28 PM on May 17th, 2011
all because of this kind of mentality, our ecomony is not as competitive as our emerging market. Being close to mass transit is considered bad quality of life. Think about how people get to work and how much gas we consume daily. I would say it is all about how it is planned and how the adjacent space be utilized. What an ignorant post.
5:25 PM on May 17th, 2011
I would agree that “it is all about how it is planned” and ignorance is thinking it’s OK to suddenly decide to run tracks through established family neighborhoods. BART at 580 does not stop people from using mass transit, and in fact would be very handy for getting Central Valley commuters into mass transit, as well as being available to local commuters. Why is it ignorance to suggest that a transit corridor is a good place for BART, but it’s not ignorance to ignore all of the possible negative impacts it would bring to in town sites?
5:53 PM on May 17th, 2011
I am the original organizer and now a member of the planning committee for the Keep BART on 580 organization, and I would like the author of this article to name even one developer involved in our effort. There are no developers! Also, we did not pay people to collect the 8,354 signatures on our petition to put this issue on the ballot. That number represents ~10% of all Livermore residents and ~18% of the registered voters in Livermore who do not want BART downtown. Their signatures were collected by passionate volunteers who faced very little opposition in the signature collection process.
These statement are all part of a smear campaign by the folks who support the current City Council’s vision for Livermore and the new, 2,000 seat Regional Theater that can’t possibly survive in Livermore. If history serves, watch for the lies to become increasingly more hateful the closer we get to the election.
Please go to our website for the reasoning behind our initiative. Then, go to their websites and see if you can figure out why they are about to spend so much money on options that the Livermore voters don’t want. See if you can find a credible financial plan.
6:51 PM on May 17th, 2011
Peggy: if you are looking for a smear campaign and hateful mis-representations, then you’ve come to the right place. That seems to be half of the articles published on this blog.
7:28 PM on May 17th, 2011
Maybe this author got his information from the Independent – another paper that is publishing inaccurate information. That paper’s owner, Joan Seppala, stands to gain through increased property value if she can bring BART downtown.
8:34 PM on May 17th, 2011
Has anyone ever waited for a train in the middle of the highway? The noise is deafening!
9:58 PM on May 17th, 2011
I’m calling Mr. Zukoski out on his statement that “Developers are funding Keep BART on 580…”. If they exist, he should be able to name them. He is parroting an editorial in The Independent 2 weeks ago which made essentially the same statement, also without evidence. The same editorial also mentioned a “Trojan horse” and was also hyperbolic in its language, equivalent to …”a tsunami of new house construction in protected land use areas”. How about it Mr. Zukowski? Methinks you are just sourcing The Independent or you definitely have a similar agenda here. In any case, back it up.
3:20 PM on May 18th, 2011
So, Mr. Zukoski, who are those developers? Still waiting……………………If you can’t produce the names, the ethical thing to do would be to retract the story.
3:52 PM on May 18th, 2011
won’t happen. zukoski has no ethics. that is his writing style. gathers articles from different sources and claim them as his. all his articles are baseless, specially the ‘stats’ he made up. his choice of food and restaurants is also awful. what do you expect from someone who drives a corolla.
10:08 PM on May 21st, 2011
So if its that bad, why do you waste precious minutes of your life on this blog?
10:29 PM on May 21st, 2011
believe it or not i’m a tp supporter!
3:48 PM on May 18th, 2011
You stepped in it this time John. The bloodsport that is Livermore politics makes our little flap over Tassajarap Prep look like a Sunday picnic. This is going to be fun to watch.
4:55 PM on May 18th, 2011
Let me correct this statement for you, John. “Developers hired to produce the unrealistic fantasies of Joan Seppala and the Livermore City Council are looking at downtown Livermore as the Trojan horse to usher in a tsunami of parking lots, theaters, 4-story condos and businesses, and they will be mighty angry if BART goes north.”
8:10 PM on May 18th, 2011
What do you expect from Mr. Zukowski? There’s a reason he didn’t win a Dublin City Council seat when he was running. Dublin was smarter than that. BART should keep it’s tracks on 580 as was the original plan. Also, have you ever noticed that when Mr. Zukowski has a restaurant or business he wants to promote on this site, he turns off the ability to leave comments. These are businesses that are run by his family/friends…. what was really funny is his review of Cellar 9. He said they have “glorious” decor. Really? Glorious decor? Give me a break… the food was overly salty and the decor looked like they’d picked up odds and ends at Tuesday Morning and a few good cans of paint. Glorious indeed.
12:25 AM on May 19th, 2011
Hey. I don’t even know why we need to waste our money to expand the BART to Livermore. I have been against this proposal for a long time. Don’t we have enough land and empty houses all along I-580 from south of Oakland to Pleasanton? The life in Livermore is not even suburban. It’s rural.
This is a total waste of money, just like the California High-Speed Rail. For public transportation, what’s the most important is the distance and density. When I see no spectacular public transportation even in Dublin, BART to Livermore is just stupid. With that kind of money, what can be done is to increase the frequency of Dublin/Pleasanton BART line, or upgrade of old BART train cars.
Please, California politicians, wake up and do something good for the future. Let Livermore people enjoy their rural life. Build public transportation system with future. Before Livermore BART stations, there should be more developments between Castro Valley and Dublin, and then build a station between Castro Valley and West Dublin. This will take the next 30-50 years easily or forever if we predict the contraction of NorCal population.
12:25 PM on May 19th, 2011
“Developers work to derail project” Why do developers want to de-rail the BART station downtown? Rather than trot out the hyperboles why don’t you further explain what dark plot is brewing so that you can “save” Livermore and bring BART with all its noise and ugliness through a lovely town!
The UGB, urban growth boundaries, can only be moved by vote and the voters set the limits. The housing units according to government requirements must be within a half mile of the station so there is no invasion of vast acres of range land through out North Livermore. The trojan horse is a myth!
The other part of the argument is that if the mayor and council were not having a “lovefest” with BART than they would have fought the incredibly high TOD numbers on the grounds that Livermore citizens paid in for decades and should be exempt from new rule changes. This argument was never floated, because the high density building in downtown required by BART’s housing unit requirement supports the theater through the convoluted laws of redevelopment agencies, since the theater is an RDA project.
If you are looking for plots and ulterior motivates with theaterical drama, then I suggest that you look at the downtown BART alignment.
4:43 PM on May 22nd, 2011
I have seen about 5 calls for Jon Zukowski to explain himself on an issues – and he never does. Any educated, intelligent person would be able to logically answer spefific questions directly and honestly. He either ignores them, says he is being picked on, or dances around a question. Is this how he is at work?