SEVERAL years ago three counties around the San Francisco Bay area ob- tained voter approval of a bond issue which gave the green light to plans for a new inter-urban rail passenger trans- port system.
human factors, Edward T. Hall Asso- ciates at Chicago as anthropologists it seemed to many a car-denouncing and renouncing planner and environ- mental enthusiast elsewhere that this startling, unlikely scheme might at last This was highly significant because, prove the feasibility of public trans- in the American context, such co-portation to a standard that could operation between local authorities on
mean pleasure instead of self-immola- a publicly-owned project is rare; and tion (and thus save many taxi fare). because it signified a widely-approved rejection of the private car as sole means of transport at a time (1962) when urban self-destruction by auto- mobile was not a generally recognised risk.
The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit scheme, or BART as it came to be called, gave high hopes. As word seeped out regarding the advisory ap pointments Walter Saroka at UBC on acoustics, Ivan Chermayeff on gra- phics, Davis and Robinson at UBC on
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If closer acquaintance with BART today brings a tinge of disappoint- ment, this is perhaps in part a measure of the degree to which we have dared to raise our sights in the intervening years. For the fact remains that when the first BART train runs this year it will still represent no mean achieve ment; and – if the target standards are achieved BART will still bear com- parison with other rapid transit sys- tems in operation.
eating. There can be no definitive cri- ticism until it is possible physically to negotiate the stations with a doddery grandad, ride the trains in the rush-hour and test the environment of the sys- tem as a setting for urban travel. Mean- while, there can be no harm in prepa- ring ourselves by a look at the aims and standards adopted and the design results now available.
Brave concept
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There is nothing timid about the basic concept: 'A high-speed network designed to compete in attractiveness with the private automobile'; and again: ... the basic and only reason for the existence of BART is ... to provide a means of transporting people more swiftly, more conveniently, more pleasantly and more economically than any other existing means of The proof of the pudding is in the short-haul transportation'.
All systems go for BART
by Gordon Irons
Far East BUILDER, May 1971
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