The Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission voted last Thursday to go ahead with its ambitious $500 million Oakland Airport Connector project, which would build a 3.2-mile, elevated rail connection from the Coliseum BART station to Oakland International Airport.
The caveat is that $70 million in federal stimulus funding for the project is hinged on BART proving to Washington that it’s done an adequate equity analysis, required under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law is designed to prevent discrimination in projects that receive federal funding.
But the Feds — a bit like a schoolteacher re-assigning slapdash homework — have called out BART for handing in an “insufficient” analysis and have threatened to pull the money unless BART addresses a list of concerns from the Federal Transit administrator, Peter M. Rogoff.
Longtime opponents of the project have seized the opportunity to argue that the project is inefficient and wasteful, and that the $70 million could be better spent on other regional transportation agencies currently
experiencing sharp funding cuts.
In his recent letter to BART (published below in this post), Mr. Rogoff expressed “serious concern” that BART’s attempt to meet the guidelines were “insufficient.”
Mr. Rogoff said of BART’s study:
“Our initial review finds it insufficient to meet the Circular’s requirement on many fronts. The equity analysis fails to analyze whether the Project’s improvement and the service reductions would have a discriminatory impact.”
The letter goes on to list what BART must still address:
(1) a policy for what constitutes a “major service change;”
(2) the impacts of the major service change according to a specified procedure, including route changes and span of service;
(3) an analysis of what alternative modes of transit are available for people affected by the service expansion and reductions, including the travel time and cost of the current route compared to the cost to the rider of the alternative, and
(4) documented evidence of steps taken to seek out and consider the viewpoints of minority and low-income populations in the course of developing the policy on major service changes.
The deadline for completing an adequate study is March 5, Mr. Rogoff wrote, or the F.T.A. could pull the $70 million.
With the tight deadline looming, BART is now working with the F.T.A. to meet the requirements, BART spokesperson Linton Johnson said. BART has to report to the M.T.C. even earlier, by Feb. 16, to discuss their progress.
Plan B for the funds, which the F.T.A. has already approved, is to spend the $70 million trying to keep various Bay Area transport agencies above water. This would send $17 million to BART, $17.5 million to Muni, $6.7 million to AC Transit, $12.2 million to VTA, and $17 million to be split between Caltrain, Golden Gate Transit, SamTrans, Vallejo and other transit systems.
Opponents of the project say a bus rapid transit option would be both more time and cost-efficient, as the one-way price of a ride on the Connector is estimated to be $6 – which would have a “prohibitive impact” on “low-income residents and low-wage airport workers.” BART defends the $6 fare as a conservative estimate on the project website.
Carole Ward Allen, a BART board member representing the district affected by the Connector Project, pointedly expressed support. “As an African-American woman,” she said, “I am offended that the project opponents would use Title VI to kill this project.”
What do you think? Should the money go to the airport connector or to support struggling transport agencies? Is $6 too much to go to Oakland International Airport?
Here’s Peter M. Rogoff’s letter to BART: