=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/2003/10= /10/BA108146.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Friday, October 10, 2003 (SF Chronicle) BART thinks to future/$2.5 billion estimate to keep up with riders Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer Ridership on BART may be slumping now, but the transit agency will need = to invest $2.5 billion over the next 25 years to keep pace with the growing number of passengers, a BART planner said Thursday. That money would be spent, in a series of investments over the years, to expand parking and other ways to get to and from BART stations. The plan would include adding stairs and escalators and enlarging platforms, buying scores of new aluminum rail cars, building new maintenance shops and improving train control, station ventilation, and switching and power systems. "We have lots of residual capacity that we can take advantage of with incremental investments," said Bill Theile, a BART planner, in a presentation to the BART Board of Directors on Thursday. The number of passengers riding BART has fallen sharply, along with the economy, over the past three years. At the peak of the tech boom in 2000, the system carried an average of 333,000 riders each weekday. Ridership dropped to about 295,000 a weekday on average earlier this year and rebounded to about 320,000 in the past week, an increase attributed in part by an Oakland A's playoff game, said BART spokesman Mike Healy. BART planners expect ridership to continue a steady climb over the next = 25 years -- to 500,000 riders each weekday -- as the Bay Area adds 1.6 million residents and 1.2 million jobs and traffic congestion gets 150 percent worse, according to Association of Bay Area Governments projections. The ridership growth will strain different parts of the BART system, Theile said. Parking is already at or near capacity. Stations -- stairways, escalators, platforms -- will be overcrowded in four to five years. Train maintenance shops will reach their limits in six years. More rail cars will be needed in eight years. A new computerized train control system will be necessary in 10 years. And in a dozen years, the system will be carrying so many passengers that reliability will be vital, Theile said, because even a minor breakdown could significantly slow or shutdown the system. BART directors thanked Theile for the report and said they considered it important for BART to plan for its future instead of waiting until the passengers -- and the problems -- overwhelm the system. BART has already begun increasing capacity with a $6 million effort that added stairways, an escalator, fare gates and an entrance to the Balboa Park station in San Francisco, the fourth busiest station in the system. Preparing for the future won't be cheap. Parking and other improvements = to make it easier for people to get to and from BART would cost $760 million. Buying 170 rail cars would cost about $748 million. Expanding stations would cost $625 million. But the $2.5 billion total of improvements would be spread out over the next two decades. BART planners are continuing to study where to get the money and how to educate Bay Area residents about BART's expansion needs, along with developing more specific plans. E-mail Michael Cabanatuan at mcabanatuan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2003 SF Chronicle