A subway is an underground railway system that is used for transportation of commuters within the suburban and urban areas. The first rapid transit subway system that was fully automated is the San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). The BART concept commenced in 1946 through the informal gathering of civic and business leaders of both sides of the San Francisco Bay but officially was launched by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and was completed in 1974 (BART, 2018). Initially, the plan involved five counties that shared the Bay, that is, Alameda, San Francisco, Contra Costa, San Mateo, and Marin, and was known as the San Francisco BART District (San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, 2018). At first, all the counties supported the concept of a rapid transit subway system, but San Mateo and Marin later withdrew citing financial constraints that limited them from supporting the project. Therefore, the five-county plan was revised to accommodate the remaining three counties and was approved by the supervisors of the three counties in 1962. The plan was then subjected to voting where the public narrowly approved it by beating the 60 percent of District’s voters’ approval that was set (San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, 2018). Thus, this paper elucidates on why San Francisco’s BART subway system was built, its cost, and why it was successful.
Since the San Francisco area faced huge post-war migration, the bridges spanning the Bay were clogging, and there was a dire need for an efficient way of decongesting the bridges. Hence, a joint Army-Navy review Board in 1947 came into conclusion that there was need for constructing a San Francisco-Oakland an underwater tube connecting link, which will be dedicated to being used by high-speed electric trains, and will serve to offload the congestion experienced on the Bay Bridge (San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, 2018).
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Financially, the voters of the counties approved a seven hundred and ninety-two million dollars bond issue to fund the construction of a 71.5-mile high-speed transit system (San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, 2018). In addition, the funds catered for construction of thirty-three stations that served seventeen communities in the three counties. Moreover, the funds also catered for an additional transit project of reconstructing San Francisco’s three and a half mile Municipal Railway. Further, an additional one hundred and thirty-three million dollars for construction of the trans-bay tube was secured by California Toll Bridge Authority bonds and revenues from Bay Area Bridge (San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, 2018). Other funds that were required included a seventy-one million dollars cost of rolling stock that was funded chiefly by bonds issued against future operating revenues. On the whole, by 1962, the whole project’s cost was estimated to be nine hundred and ninety-six million dollars (San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, 2018). A month after commencement, the project faced a lawsuit by a taxpayer challenging the validity of the bond election and the legality of the District itself (BART, 2018). This delayed the project for six months which accrued a litigation cost of twelve million dollars.
Overall, since it became operational in 1974, the San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit has played an essential role in decongesting the Bay Bridge as it was the chief reason for constructing the bridge. Additionally, it has served to link San Francisco with a workforce from across the District thus leading to the rapid economic growth of San. Furthermore, San Francisco’s BART has helped to solve limitations such as limited road capacity.
References
BART (2018). A History of BART: The Project Begins | bart.gov . [online] Bart.gov. Available at: https://www.bart.gov/about/history/history2 [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (2018). A History of BART: The Concept is Born . [online] Bart.gov. Available at: https://www.bart.gov/about/history [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].
