20 YEARS OF THE BAY AREA RAPID-TRANSIT SYSTEM - LAND-USE AND DEVELOPMENT IMPACTS

Planners of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, the first large- scale urban rail project built in the U.S. since the early part of thi s century, hoped BART would encourage compact and orderly growth, and spawn a multi-centered settlement pattern. The initial BART impact stu dy, conducted a few years following the system's 1973 opening, conclud ed that BART played a fairly modest, though not inconsequential, role in shaping metropolitan growth and land-use patterns. This paper summa rizes findings from an update of the original BART impact study, exami ning BART's influences on urban development patterns 20 years after se rvices started. In general, our findings are similar to those of the o riginal impact study. Over the past 20 years, land-use changes associa ted with BART have been largely localized, limited to downtown San Fra ncisco and Oakland and a handful of suburban stations. Elsewhere, few land-use changes have occurred, either because of neighborhood opposit ion or a lackluster local real estate market. While BART appears to ha ve helped bring about a more multi-centered regional settlement patter n, such as inducing mid-rise office development near the Walnut Creek and Concord stations, it has done little to stem the tide of freeway-o riented suburban employment growth over the past two decades. Indeed, recent office additions near East Bay stations pale in comparison to t he amount of floorspace built in non-BART freeway corridors. Near seve ral suburban stations, the most notable change has been the addition o f multi-family housing. In most instances. local redevelopment authori ties helped leverage these projects by providing various financial inc entives and assistance with land assemblege. Statistical analyses reve al that the availability of vacant and developable land is an importan t predictor of whether land-use changes occurred near stations. BART, in and of itself, has clearly not been able to induce large-scale land -use changes, though under the right circumstances, it appears to have been an important contributor. If the Bay Area is to achieve the comp act, multi-centered built form that was originally envisaged, we concl ude that stronger public policy initiatives will be needed to channel future regional growth to BART corridors. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Lt d.