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"The story goes: Marin County, worried about cost of the extension and engineering concerns of running BART on the Golden Gate Bridge, ultimately backed out of

by rsync 5y ago

"The story goes: Marin County, worried about cost of the extension and engineering concerns of running BART on the Golden Gate Bridge, ultimately backed out of the BART District. Fin." I want to push back on this slightly ... The received wisdom - repeated ad infinitum - among bay area progressives is that Marin County rejected BART based on racist, exclusionary, NIMBY concerns. That is how "the story goes" in these discussions. I have never heard anyone mention engineering issues. The reality - which the article explains - is that both of these narratives are wrong: Marin County approved BART and was ready to proceed and it was the San Mateo rejection that ultimately killed it.

jimmygrapes 5y ago
I mentally applied the 5 Whys to each of these explanations. I suggest others do the same.
pvg 5y ago
I think you're conflating several different strands of this story - the idea that San Mateo withdrew from BART in part for NYMBY-ish and exclusionary reasons is fairly well supported.
- teakettle42 5y ago
  It’s fascinating how quickly “NIMBY” has become a very generic and rather vicious moral pejorative applied to anyone that does not support development. It previously described people who did not support development in their neighborhood, but would support it elsewhere. Now it just means “anyone opposed to any development I deem a moral/ethical/equity imperative”. I remember when pro-development sentiment was recognized as gentrifying wealth extraction, and both anti-progressive and anti-environmentalist. Now it’s somehow exclusionary and anti-progressive to not support high-density development projects backed by national real estate firms with trillion-plus dollar investment funds. Wealth extraction from a permanent renter class is progressive orthodoxy, and individual residents are the baddies. Talk about a PR coup.
  - bryananderson 5y ago
    We are not talking about the same type of development today as in the midcentury decades. In those days, “redevelopment” was a euphemism for the wholesale destruction of entire neighborhoods by use of eminent domain, whether the residents liked it or not. Promises to maybe someday build replacement housing which the old residents could afford were never kept. The “redevelopment” process also had a funny way of only happening to minority neighborhoods. This was indeed gentrifying wealth extraction, and racist to boot. The housing developments which get fought over in SF today are not demolishing tenants’ existing homes—indeed SF has laws preventing demolition of housing which has been tenant-occupied at any time in the last several years. These developments would only add new supply to the market. Turning a Nordstrom valet parking lot into new housing (24% of which is below market rate) is not the same thing as wiping out thousands of exiting homes to build pricier ones. Anti-development sentiment is very understandably fed by the memory of the vast harms of the “redevelopment” years. But we have to recognize the difference.
  - pvg 5y ago
    I'm using it to make to describe the history in less morally direct and potentially forum-inflammatory terms. The fairly recent history of urban and transit planning in the US is, in reality, full of decisions and outcomes of highly dubious morality. This is a pretty vanilla mainstream interpretation rather than some just-so story promulgated by 'progressives' as the GP appears to suggest.
  - CPLX 5y ago
    The three choices are mandate sterilization or birth control, restrict movement with internal borders, or build more housing. Until the anti-development types acknowledge this they are completely full of shit. We’ve literally created a situation where the next generation has nowhere to live. That’s why people are mad.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jeffbee 5y ago
Marin doesn't have the built environment to support BART anyway. In 1960 it was the smallest of the proposed counties, having a population only about as large as Berkeley. It remains ridiculously small.
narrator 5y ago
Below is a video of a Marin County Supervisor reading a letter sent in by a prominent local doctor regarding the SMART train project. It's this kind of thing that IMHO, is at least part of the reason why there will never be BART to Marin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfO8CCMmHjA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfO8CCMmHjA
- jrockway 5y ago
  I think that congestion charging is the way around this. If you want to drive to the city, fine, but it will cost you $50. Train suddenly looking like a decent option.
  - narrator 5y ago
    Bridge toll is already $10.

by rsync 5y ago

jimmygrapes 5y ago

I mentally applied the 5 Whys to each of these explanations. I suggest others do the same.

pvg 5y ago

I think you're conflating several different strands of this story - the idea that San Mateo withdrew from BART in part for NYMBY-ish and exclusionary reasons is fairly well supported.

teakettle42 5y ago
It’s fascinating how quickly “NIMBY” has become a very generic and rather vicious moral pejorative applied to anyone that does not support development. It previously described people who did not support development in their neighborhood, but would support it elsewhere. Now it just means “anyone opposed to any development I deem a moral/ethical/equity imperative”. I remember when pro-development sentiment was recognized as gentrifying wealth extraction, and both anti-progressive and anti-environmentalist. Now it’s somehow exclusionary and anti-progressive to not support high-density development projects backed by national real estate firms with trillion-plus dollar investment funds. Wealth extraction from a permanent renter class is progressive orthodoxy, and individual residents are the baddies. Talk about a PR coup.
- bryananderson 5y ago
  We are not talking about the same type of development today as in the midcentury decades. In those days, “redevelopment” was a euphemism for the wholesale destruction of entire neighborhoods by use of eminent domain, whether the residents liked it or not. Promises to maybe someday build replacement housing which the old residents could afford were never kept. The “redevelopment” process also had a funny way of only happening to minority neighborhoods. This was indeed gentrifying wealth extraction, and racist to boot. The housing developments which get fought over in SF today are not demolishing tenants’ existing homes—indeed SF has laws preventing demolition of housing which has been tenant-occupied at any time in the last several years. These developments would only add new supply to the market. Turning a Nordstrom valet parking lot into new housing (24% of which is below market rate) is not the same thing as wiping out thousands of exiting homes to build pricier ones. Anti-development sentiment is very understandably fed by the memory of the vast harms of the “redevelopment” years. But we have to recognize the difference.
- pvg 5y ago
  I'm using it to make to describe the history in less morally direct and potentially forum-inflammatory terms. The fairly recent history of urban and transit planning in the US is, in reality, full of decisions and outcomes of highly dubious morality. This is a pretty vanilla mainstream interpretation rather than some just-so story promulgated by 'progressives' as the GP appears to suggest.
- CPLX 5y ago
  The three choices are mandate sterilization or birth control, restrict movement with internal borders, or build more housing. Until the anti-development types acknowledge this they are completely full of shit. We’ve literally created a situation where the next generation has nowhere to live. That’s why people are mad.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jeffbee 5y ago

Marin doesn't have the built environment to support BART anyway. In 1960 it was the smallest of the proposed counties, having a population only about as large as Berkeley. It remains ridiculously small.

narrator 5y ago

Below is a video of a Marin County Supervisor reading a letter sent in by a prominent local doctor regarding the SMART train project. It's this kind of thing that IMHO, is at least part of the reason why there will never be BART to Marin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfO8CCMmHjA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfO8CCMmHjA

jrockway 5y ago
I think that congestion charging is the way around this. If you want to drive to the city, fine, but it will cost you $50. Train suddenly looking like a decent option.
- narrator 5y ago
  Bridge toll is already $10.