The Livermore City Council voted unanimously to recommend that a BART extension to Livermore go underground through the downtown and at grade to Vasco Road.

If funding could not be obtained for a downtown station, the council’s vote included the recommendation to extend BART to Vasco Road. A Vasco station would be near the national laboratories and the area where Livermore anticipates that a large number of jobs will be generated at the i-Hub. The state has designated Livermore as an i-Hub, a center for innovation.

The final decision on a BART extension alignment will be made by the BART board. The decision is expected to made in June.

You can read the full article here.

Here’s a link to the video of the Livermore City Council meeting on 4/26/2010. It is about 4hrs long mostly citizen comments. The council vote and discussion starts at 3hrs 14 minutes and goes for about 30 minutes.

We congratulate the Livermore City Council on this bold, forward-looking decision. We thank the Planning Commission and City Engineers for their hard work on this matter. We request the City of Livermore and other agencies to put forth detailed plans to address the concerns of the citizens adversely impacted by these stations in the years ahead. Good luck to the City of Livermore in crossing the next hurdles and getting funding for the BART stations it so deserves.

Supporters of a downtown BART (a relatively small but vocal group)have been packing the previous meetings.  Unless the city council starts to hear more from the many Livermore residents who disagree with a downtown alignment, there is a high probability that the council will vote to endorse an alignment that runs underground below Portola and Junction Avenues, with stations downtown and at Vasco Road.  This alignment will require the acquisition and potential condemnation of close to 200 parcels, including from 84 to 104 residences.  City staff and the planning commission are recommending this alignment.

We feel strongly that a downtown BART station would be bad for both the downtown and our chance of ever getting BART.  With its massive price tag of nearly four billion dollars, the downtown alignment is significantly more expensive than the two-station freeway option (about an additional 2/3 of a billion dollars.)  It also seems that downtown proponents are in denial about the traffic and parking impacts of a downtown BART station.  To get a picture of the parking requirement, imagine the Dublin BART parking structure and surrounding ground-level parking in downtown Livermore.  We support a single station at Isabel/I580 (1.1 billion dollars) as an acceptable and fundable alternative.  BART already owns the station site at this location.

We believe most Livermore residents do not want to see BART downtown.  The breakdown of EIR comments from those who expressed a preference showed that more than three times as many people supported the freeway alternative as compared to downtown supporters (241 vs. 73), and most of them were very strongly opposed to a downtown station.  We see no reason not to believe that this is representative of the community.

The most effective way to influence the council is to attend Monday’s council meeting and express your views.  If you are unable to make the meeting we urge you to e-mail city council members prior to the meeting.  You can access these addresses at the council website – www.ci.livermore.ca.us.

Please join us and speak out for the only affordable solution for Livermore.  If you would like more information feel free to call either of us.

Valerie Raymond – 447-4027
Linda Jeffery-Sailors – 449-7274

It is important to note that the 12 mile Hayward to Dublin/Pleasanton extension was built for half a billion dollars.  The downtown route will cost just under $4 billion (in today’s dollars) for only 11 miles.  The downtown route is not likely to get funded and we will lose BART to Livermore if that route is selected.

The argument that the freeway stations have environmental issues does not show the true picture.  Most of stated environmental issues are self imposed ordinances by the city of Livermore……..the Scenic Corridor Ordinance, the Airport District boundaries, and the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB).  A small adjustment to the UGB would give us the room needed for our freeway stations.  I think the voters would approve these minor changes to gain two BART stations and save 81 family homes!

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*Comparative Summary of Key Environmental Considerations, pg 14 of city staff report.

Linda Jeffery Sailors
841 Chaucer Way
Livermore, CA 94551

(The City Council will be having a public hearing on this issue on April 26 @ 7 pm. )

Three workshops have been scheduled to take public input on a BART extension to Livermore. In addition, public hearings will be held to take comments on the programmatic environmental impact report.

The workshops will be held Nov. 12, Dec. 10 and Jan. 21, 2010. All are from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. They will be held at the Shrine Event Center, 170 Lindbergh Ave., Livermore.

The draft EIR for the Livermore BART extension will be released at a meeting of the Tri-Valley Rail Policy Group at 1 p.m. Nov. 6 at the Livermore library. There will also be a scoping presentation about the Tri-Valley link to the state high speed rail project at the meeting.

The first BART public EIR hearing is set for Nov. 18 at 2 p.m. at the City Council Chambers, 3575 Pacific Ave., Livermore. A second hearing will be held at 6 p.m. on Dec. 2 at the Robert Livermore Community Center, 4444 East Avenue, Livermore.

The City of Livermore has been working with BART to study the possible future extension of BART into Livermore.

To ensure that your comments are in the public record please send them before July 19, 2008. You can email them to info@barttolivermore.org
You may also fax comments to: 510-464-7673 or mail them to:

Mr. Malcolm Quint,
The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District,
300 Lakeside Drive, 16th floor,
Oakland, CA, 94612

“A rule-of-thumb estimate on BART cost has been approximately $100 million per mile. Just bringing it to Livermore would cost about $1 billion, BART officials say.”

Letter from former BART director Robert Allen in the same issue of The Independent:
“BART trackway costs about $12 million/mile at grade in a freeway median or along the former railroad grade. That includes ballasted double track, traction power, train control, ductwork, and fencing/barriers. This figure is based on 2001 figures
escalated to 2006.

People who should know better are throwing out the figure of $100 million/mile, citing the cost of BART to SFO. That line was put in subway (over my strong objection) instead of at grade along SP’s abandoned San Bruno branch. As a result, it cost close to $500 million more than it should have. Subways are fabulously costly, and normally warranted only in a patronage-rich city core.”

What do you think?

Matt

The Livermore station needs around $12 million to do the preliminary engineering and environmental studies before we can be considered for the Federal “new starts” money. Not only were we in line before San Jose, we also have the problem of having I-580, the 2^nd worse commute corridor in the Bay Area. Our Sacramento representatives and our local elected officials need to play fair, not politics. There is a very short time left to get Livermore into the 20 year Federal Transportation Plan. If we don’t get the station ready to build soon it will not happen until after 2030.

Linda Jeffery Sailors