<\/p>\n
Parking at the West Oakland BART station will become more difficult as spaces will be sacrified while construction begins on an affordable housing project.<\/p>\n
Don Feria\/For the S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
At West Oakland\u00a0BART<\/a> Station, a planned housing<\/a> development comes with a polarizing trade-off: nearly 400 parking spaces must go.<\/p>\n Signs posted around the station lot warn patrons of a transformation<\/a> underfoot. The first phase comprises 240 affordable apartments, stacked over asphalt that currently bears white, rectangular markings for all the cars that swarm in daily from Alameda, Emeryville, the Oakland hills or the deep flatlands.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s the urbanists\u2019 dream and the suburban motorists\u2019 nightmare, when housing for cars becomes housing for people.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I first heard about it, I thought, \u2018Oh, no way,\u2019\u201d said Michelle Fogner, who lives miles away from BART, in the Oakland hills, and drives to West Oakland for convenient transit.\u00a0<\/p>\n She and other East Bay residents have relied on the same hack for decades. Park<\/a> at West Oakland BART, catch a train to downtown San Francisco and skip all the Bay Bridge traffic. If all goes well, a person can zoom through the Transbay Tube and arrive at the Financial District in less than ten minutes.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n But the new affordable housing project is about to upend that tried-and-true commuting routine. Beginning May 4, BART will convert 86 reserved spaces (the ones people book ahead of time on a daily or monthly basis) into daily, first-come, first-served spots.\u00a0<\/p>\n The bigger disruption comes in July when BART officials expect to remove 300 of the 439 parking spaces. Two years from now, the developers aim to launch their second phase. Most of the remaining BART parking stalls will disappear, leaving just 42 in the Chester Street lot. (That phase is still unfunded, and BART has no projected timeline for it to begin.)<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n For commuters who regularly park at West Oakland station, the change could be vexing.<\/p>\n \u201cThis will definitely make it more inconvenient to get to San Francisco,\u201d said Jeff Ma of Berkeley, as he exited West Oakland station and walked to his car Thursday morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nearby, Fogner had snagged one of the last available spots, steps from the station concourse, beneath the shade of the elevated track.<\/p>\n Fogner is already scouring for alternate places to park, and finding that none are optimal. She knows gas station owners who would rent out space for perhaps $15 a day, which is slightly more than BART\u2019s drop-in fee of $13.90 (or $16.20 to reserve a spot in advance). If demand increases as commuters are displaced from the BART lot, owners of private lots \u2014 or businesses with surplus parking \u2014 might try to profit, Fogner surmised.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople will just start charging whatever,\u201d she said, dreading the loss of an \u201ceasy, regulated, governmental\u201d facility.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Others worry that motorists who lose spots at West Oakland Station would pour into the surrounding neighborhood, occupying curb space that should be for residents. Some motorists admitted they already do that to avoid the $13.90 fee. The blocks that surround the station have two-hour spaces, though residents with permits can park there all day.<\/p>\n At least one BART rider welcomed the housing project, and said it was worth sacrificing acres of valuable car storage.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m someone who has lived in affordable housing for most of my life, so I know we need more of it,\u201d said Brenden Murphy. He lives in San Francisco\u2019s Mission District and rides BART each day to his cabinetry business in West Oakland. Though Murphy also drives a van, he typically parks it at the shop and walks to the station.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many West Oakland residents share Murphy\u2019s sentiments, believing the new \u201cMandela Station\u201d apartments will catalyze economic growth in their community, said Kasheica McKinney, director of transit-oriented development at BART.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is one of the (transit oriented developments) where the level of support has been highly consistent,\u201d McKinney said. She recalled countless stakeholder meetings in which dozens of residents showed up to meet the developers, Alan Dones of SUDA LLC and MacFarlane Partners.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Renderings of the Mandela Station show tall, gridded buildings with courtyards and rows of trees on the sidewalks, a sharp contrast to West Oakland station\u2019s historical role as a park-and-ride for people driving in from the suburbs. BART officials realized the strategic location and desirability of the West Oakland lot about 25 years ago. In 2001, they made it the first pay-to-park lot<\/a> in the rail system, charging $100 a month to reserve a spot. Within four years, the lot was filling up each morning by 5:45 a.m., so BART implemented a $5 daily fee.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even as the fee escalated, commuters remained undeterred. BART\u2019s customer surveys suggest that many people travel far out of their way to park at West Oakland and get a ten-minute connection to San Francisco, McKinney said.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople actually pass up a lot of other stations and come to West Oakland for the easy access,\u201d she explained. \u201cSo our hope is that they will go to a station that\u2019s closer to home, which is likely to have more parking available.\u201d<\/p>\n Fogner admitted she\u2019s among the people willing to drive farther to get close to the Transbay Tube. When West Oakland eliminates parking, she may revert to Rockridge Station. That North Oakland hub has rectangular swaths of pavement flanking both sides of College Avenue. The ride to San Francisco is considerably longer, at 25 minutes, with a potential 10-minute wait for the train. But it\u2019s a stable option, since BART\u2019s real estate division is not eyeing the Rockridge lot for development. Yet.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parking at the West Oakland BART station will become more difficult as spaces will be sacrified while construction…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[3767,184,332,1011,143,145,144,3766,1967],"class_list":["post-272463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bart","tag-bay-area","tag-east-bay","tag-housing","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-transit","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}