=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/chronicle/archive/2002/03= /29/MN235449.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, March 29, 2002 (SF Chronicle) BART approves link to Oakland airport/32 years in the wings, could be done = by '08 Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer After five feasibility studies, scores of meetings, the financial backing of Alameda County voters, and more than three decades of waiting, a train connection between BART and the Oakland International Airport is finally on its way. Thirty-two years after the connection was first contemplated, BART directors yesterday approved a $232 million plan to link the transit district's Coliseum station to the airport. The link will be an elevated and automated train, tram or monorail that, like BART, will run in an exclusive right-of-way. "It's a long time in coming," said Joel Keller, BART board president. "Oakland International Airport should have a world-class (transit) connection, and this will bring that." If it stays on schedule, the Oakland Airport Connector should begin service in 2008. It's already been a long ride. Talk of a BART-Oakland airport connection began even before BART started service in 1972. A feasibility study for the link was completed in 1970 with subsequent studies following in 1975, 1979, 1981 and 1993. The project got the boost it needed in November 2000, when Alameda County voters overwhelmingly approved a transportation sales-tax measure that promised $75 million for the project. And last fall, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission included the connection in its regional transportation plan, the closest thing there is to a promise a project will be built. In addition to the Measure B sales tax funds, money to pay for the airpo= rt train will come from the state, Oakland, the Port of Oakland and bridge tolls. Once the BART link is completed, passengers will be able to get to the airport by taking an escalator from the southern end of the Coliseum BART platform up to the connector platform, where they will board automated, and perhaps driverless, vehicles. The cars will cruise along elevated tracks at speeds between 25 mph and 55 mph along Hegenberger Road, dipping into a tunnel at Doolittle Drive, then rising again through airport property to a station a two-minute walk from the ticket counters. Along the way, they'll stop briefly at intermediate stations that would = be built at Edgewater Road and Doolittle Drive, where hotels, offices and shops are being considered as part of an Oakland redevelopment effort. BART directors gave their go-ahead for the project by approving environmental studies and choosing the automated train system over a beefed-up shuttle bus system that would have used some dedicated lanes and been able to pre-empt traffic signals. The 5-to-2 vote, with directors Roy Nakadegawa and Tom Radulovich opposed, allows BART to start work on the project by buying property. Engineering studies, already under way, are expected to be done by July 2003 with construction beginning in February 2004. Both Nakadegawa and Radulovich thought that the bus system, which would have cost significantly less -- $30.2 million -- deserved more serious consideration. But a wide array of Oaklanders -- from Mayor Jerry Brown to Sylvester Grisby of the Coliseum Neighborhood Council -- argued that the automated train was the only way to go. "We feel this project is an Academy Award for all of us," said Grisby, w= ho said the transit link would make not only make it easier for travelers and workers to get to the airport, but also would boost the economic fortunes of the neighborhood. With BART preparing to open its $1.5 billion extension to San Francisco International Airport in late fall, Brown said, "it's only appropriate that Oakland (airport) should get a similar connection." The Oakland airport link would not be a BART extension, but travelers would not have to leave the BART system to transfer to the airport trains, and stations along the connection would be equipped with BART fare gates and ticket machines. Although the link will be an automated system on an elevated track, the type of technology has yet to be determined. It could be a monorail, a rubber- tired train like SFO's new AirTrain or a light-rail train like Muni Metro. The airport trains would carry an estimated 13,540 riders a day with the trip between BART and airport taking 11.2 minutes. If those projections are correct, about 14 percent of travelers flying in and out of Oakland would use the connection -- the second highest percentage nationally behind only Reagan International Airport in Washington, which has a BART-like Metro rail connection. E-mail Michael Cabanatuan at mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com.=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle