Critics Don’t Slow BART Extension to S.F. Airport

Some call it transportation planning at its finest, while others label it one of the most expensive, least effective fixes for the Bay Area’s worsening transportation woes.

Either way, a mainly subterranean rail line extending south of San Francisco to the seventh busiest airport in the world is under construction and scheduled for completion in two years. So far, the $1.2-billion project has had a bumpy ride en route to San Francisco International Airport.

The 8.7-mile extension by the Bay Area Rapid Transit District will begin in the city of Colma, the current end of that BART line. It is set to end in the city of Millbrae just beyond the airport.

Bay Area residents and visitors anticipate boarding a train that will take them directly into an airport terminal and allow them to bypass the increasingly congested freeways.

The airport extension “is an enormous opportunity,” said Steve Heminger, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the region’s planning body. “We missed that opportunity in the 1960s when the BART system was originally built. We think it would be foolish to miss that opportunity again.”

But getting the federal government to come forward with $750 million--its promised share of the total bill--is one struggle. Land acquisition has yet to be completed. Moreover, experts recently said that in the event of an earthquake, BART is the region’s “most vulnerable” transportation system, without plans or funds for seismic upgrading.

BART has extended its lines into the East Bay suburbs in the past several years with far less controversy. Critics of the airport line, however, wonder why the system is spending more than a billion dollars to expand when there is no money for seismic retrofitting along the existing 95 miles of track.

Jon Twichell, a private transportation planner and one of the airport line’s biggest critics, argues that “what we have at the moment is a project that is way over budget and is being significantly underfunded.”

A BART extension to the airport has been in the planning stages for nearly 30 years.

San Francisco is not alone among cities trying to bring rail service to airports. In Los Angeles County, travelers complain about the above-ground Green Line train, derided as a “road to nowhere” because it ends about a quarter of a mile from Los Angeles International Airport. From there, a bus takes airline passengers to terminals. Some planners urge a Green Line extension into LAX.

In New York, controversy has raged for three decades over building a dedicated rail line connecting Manhattan with Kennedy and La Guardia airports. Earlier this year, a scaled-down project was approved for rail to Kennedy airport.

The BART line to the San Francisco airport--which is actually in neighboring San Mateo County--is scheduled for completion by New Year’s Eve in 2001. The project meshes with a $2.4-billion airport expansion that should be done a year earlier.

The new airport rail station, whose $200-million cost is being footed by the airport itself, will be in a terminal on airport property. Disembarking passengers will be able to walk just five minutes to reach the international and United Airlines ticket counters. A separate light rail system built by the airport will take passengers to other terminals.

Actually, the project involves two largely underground lines. One will come above ground as it curves into the airport. The other will bypass the airport and continue southeast to a final above-ground station in the neighboring city of Millbrae.

The extension is “very crucial,” said airport spokesman Ron Wilson. “Every person you put on BART you’ve taken out of a vehicle. With the gridlock and congestion in San Mateo County . . . it is of prime importance that a high-occupancy transit system is in place.”

The Millbrae station is one of the most controversial components of the BART expansion. The extension goes to Millbrae because airport officials refused to have their facility be the system’s terminus. They feared that the airport would become one big park-and-ride station for commuters living south of San Francisco.

In addition, the Millbrae station allows CalTrain passengers from farther south to link up with BART and take it into the center of San Francisco. CalTrain now stops outside the central Financial District.

But San Francisco Supervisor Michael Yaki questions the practicality of the Millbrae station in a region without the funds to meet other pressing transit needs. “BART is the 100-pound gorilla eating all the bananas,” complained Yaki, who plans hearings in January on the Millbrae issue.

“The people of San Francisco voted for BART to the airport,” said Yaki, who calls himself a fan of BART and the airport extension. “What they didn’t vote on was BART to Millbrae. I think if you want to reduce auto traffic, BART to SFO is key.”

BART General Manager Thomas E. Margro charges that critics who want to transfer the Millbrae station’s $250 million for use on other projects are being “intellectually dishonest.” Those funds are earmarked for new construction and cannot be slid into a seismic retrofit, he said.

BART officials concede that such retrofitting should be done, but they note that that the system suffered little damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta quake.

Some officials in the town of Burlingame, which borders Millbrae, also challenge the Millbrae station. They fear that their small city will receive a major traffic increase from motorists leaving congested freeways and cutting through town en route to the station.

Perhaps the biggest complaint about the airport extension is its funding. In 1997, the federal government promised $750 million, but gave no cash upfront. The rest of the $1.2 billion will come from local and state sources.

The problem is that each year federal money for BART must be appropriated, and so far the project has not been very lucky. In the 1998 fiscal year, BART asked for $56 million and got $29 million. This year, officials asked for $74 million and got $40 million.

“The annual cash flow from Washington is 50%,” said Twichell, a board member of a group called Coalition for a One-Stop Terminal, which opposes the Millbrae station. “That is going to drive up the cost of the debt service on this.”

BART officials say they are confident that all the federal money will come. Its slow arrival, they say, has not put a damper on construction or caused the overall costs to rise so far. But spokesman Michael Healy concedes that “it’s the years after that we have to look at pretty carefully.”

Work will continue, but future federal shortfalls may have to be made up by borrowing, thereby increasing the project’s price tag by adding debt costs.

There may be “ups and downs” in cash flow as the project waits for Washington to make good on its agreement, Margro said. “But the history is that they have never failed to deliver on their end of a contract.”