A new look for Embarcadero, Montgomery BART stations?
Image courtesy BART via SFGate
Holy transit geekery! BART folks are floating a rather expensive, rather … laborious upgrade for San Francicso’s Embarcadero and Montgomery BART stations.
According to Matier and Ross:
The rebuilding of the Embarcadero and Montgomery Street stations would require tearing out the existing walls, installing new platforms, boring additional tunnels for staircases, and putting in extra elevators.
For added safety, the new platforms would have automated sliding glass doors that would open when the trains arrive.
The whole job could take more than five years, but the stations would remain open during that time.
The price tag currently sits at $900 million, and work wouldn’t begin until the next decade.
Get all the juicy details at SFGate.
What about building an underground walkway from one (or both) of these stations to the new Transbay Terminal?
If construction is not set to start until the next decade, why not start planning now for a second transbay tube that would connect to the new Transbay Terminal.
Some observers have suggested that longer trains should be run more often at peak periods as a cheaper short-term solution to rider congestion. However, even they believe that this added platform solution will be needed in the future (but they are not sure it is needed in ten years).