A great deal of transportation planning is based in rhetoric–BART to SFO sounds good, BART to San Jose sounds logical, the Oakland Airport Connector sounds necessary. Too often, good projects don’t gain any momentum because they just don’t sound interesting enough to BART’s suburban constituency–a 30th & Mission sounds completely random and unnecessary when BART already has two other stations with “& Mission” in it. In the comments on my last post, Mike Fogel brought up an interesting idea of rebranding BART projects to sound more attractive to suburbanites
BART’s suburban majority will keep focusing on projects that serve the suburbs… if they don’t they’ll just be voted out and replaced by someone who will.
But, that doesn’t mean that all urban projects are necessarily out. They just needed to be billed in a light that’s more attractive to the suburban BART rider/voter.
So, when we talk about expanding BART in the urban areas we should talk about it in terms of what it would provide as a destination of a trip rather than as a source. For example, rather than ‘BART on geary’, how about ‘BART to golden gate park!’ Or not ‘a second transbay tube’ but rather ‘BART to the ball park’. etc.
Expanding upon this idea, below are some potential rebrandings for good but boring projects to increase their suburban appeal, accompanied by the reactions of an average suburbanite:
Geary BART: “Sounds boring. Isn’t Geary near all the drug addicts in the Tenderloin? No way, give us BART to Tracy!!!”
BART to Golden Gate Park: “OMG that would be so great! I never go to Golden Gate Park on weekends because it takes me two hours to drive there, but now I can just hop on in Lafayette and be there in no time! DeYoung here I come!”
San Antonio Station: “Where is San Antonio? Texas? Oh it’s in Oakland? Sounds like a place I wouldn’t want to go, since it’s not the airport, the coliseum, or Emeryville.”
Estuary Station: “Ooooo sounds environmental! Will I get to see sea otters and whales?”
Albany Station: “Well, I guess.”
Solano Ave/Albany: “How North Berkeley! I’ve read about it in the Chronicle’s ‘Yuppie’ section!”
Caltrain: “Ew”
pBart: “BART’s on the Peninsula??? And they built it overnight for free??? Awesome!”
98th Ave Station: well… can’t really think of a way to dress this one up.
pBart. love it!
Too true.
98th Avenue station … San Leandro del Norte maybe?
I like it! When in doubt, making up a fake place name is always a great alternative (Pittsburg sounds too blue collar for a BART stop–let’s call it “Bay Point!”)
I’ve often wondered how much difference a bucket of blue paint and a “ba” stencil might make in perceptions of Caltrain.
Steve do you think it really makes that big a difference?
I’m being somewhat tongue-in-cheeky, but folks in the South Bay certainly seem to have this idea (and my friend who grew up down there has confirmed this) that BART is sleek, modern, etc. while Caltrain is old and dumpy. Putting aside all of the obvious political questions–I do actually think if the agencies were to merge and Caltrain were rebranded “BART Regional” or some such, it would go some distance toward changing that. Think U-Bahn and S-Bahn.
Anyway, not to get off-topic. Dig all of the ideas here.
Absolutely it would make a difference. BART’s “brand” is an integral part of Bay Area culture, whereas Caltrain is an afterthought that many people haven’t even heard of. Streamlining Caltrain into the BART system as pBART or whatever would dramatically expand Caltrain’s appeal and lead to a significant ridership increase.
When the SFO extension opened, they issued promotional posters that came pretty close to branding Caltrain as BART. It reads: “YOUR TRIP JUST GOT A LOT EASIER. Now ride BART to SFO and the Peninsula*!” The * points to the footnote that “For Caltrain weekday service to 33 destinations connect at Millbrae BART station.”
(commenting months later, I know)
The BART brand falls short once you actually start crunching the times. On vacation in Silicon Valley a few weeks ago, I used Caltrain, BART, and a borrowed bike to get around to Oakland, Emeryville, and Walnut Creek. With a return deadline to a party, I pretty quickly figured out that when I had a choice, Caltrain was faster.
That, and where Caltrain has a bike car, BART has no special accommodations, and officially kicks me off the train at Embarcadero anyway (though several people told me not to worry). The rules for navigating the stations with a bike were not helpful, either — given an escalator going only up, and stairs with people coming down (because there IS no down escalator), BART rules have me hauling the bike up into the faces of the people coming down the stairs, instead of standing with the bike on the escalator and not inconveniencing anyone (I took the escalator).
The most insulting thing, to me, is the nonsense for Caltrain riders trying to make a weekday trip to the airport. Transfer at Millbrae, go north, transfer on BART, go south. I lived in Menlo Park years ago when we voted for the measure that funded that extension, and I can assure you that I did not envision such an idiotic and inconvenient connection to the airport.