It Cost Too Much and It Goes Too Slow

By John Miché

A discourse on BART and real money

It Cost Too Much and Goes Too Slow

In the words of the late Senator Durksen "A billion dollars here, and a billion dollars there, pretty soon we're talk'n about real money". The BART extension to SFO cost a little over a billion dollars to go less than 10 miles. At this rate, extending the system to San Jose will cost Four Billion Dollars. Warm Springs to San Jose Two Billion. Antioch to Pittsburgh another Billion. Oakland Airport a mere 500 million. Dublin to Livermore (Say wasn't that extension suppose to go that far in the first place) another Billion. Oh, and let's not forget renovation of the original system at a Billion dollars and earthquake retrofits at near another Billion. Add it all up and we're talk'n real money to the tune of Ten Billion Dollars! (that's $10,000,000,000 to you and me)

So, let's say we scrape the money together and ring the bay with BART (that's the lower San Francisco Bay, you folks up in Marin, Napa, and Sonoma are on your own). What'll we have? If we start today, the service won't come on line until 2010. Too little, to late. We need cost effective public transit alternatives now.

As for rapid transit, it's not. The dirty little secret about BART is that the train control system is to slow. After spending 250 million dollars and 10 years, the new (as of five years ago) computer control system is no better than the original. The system's architecture is obsolete. It has absolutely no flexibility, express and special service trains (take me out to the Ball Game) are out of the question.

As if this isn't bad enough, BART's non-standard gauge and power supply (Edison used DC!) guaranty the system cannot use standard rail components and increase the costs to build and maintain the system by at least 10% (that's a billion dollars in real money).

At 100 million dollars a mile, BART is the most expensive train ride in the world. Extensions take forever to build, and the operating speed is no better than a Bus. It cost too much, and it goes too slow.

I don't have all the answers. What I have is well trained mind and a commitment to quality in accordance with Deming's principles. BART can do better. The first step is to stop throwing money at it and start using our heads.

John Miché