How Oakland Reeled in a Behemoth and Became Attractive to Global Capital Overnig

[Ocklawaha]

Also, in recent years, an automated people mover system was built between Oakland's airport terminal and the Coliseum BART station. In the event JTA decides to keep the Skyway was an APM but modify its operation, the Oakland APM is another example out there to evaluate.

Be very careful what you wish for, JTA, as we know it is certifiably brain dead.

The ribbon was cut Friday on BART's new $484 million Oakland Airport Connector, with a ceremony complete with the requisite speeches, live music, and even a raffle. Free rides were given to everyone who came.

The new cable-propelled system is elegant, clean, quiet, and relatively quick. But it's also a shining example of how BART can misplace its funding priorities by building a new flyover train to serve relatively few passengers while neglecting — and increasing — the maintenance costs of the starved larger rail network, as transit advocates argued throughout the years it took to plan and build the OAC. Its $6 fare will leave everyday BART riders paying for the lion's share of its operating costs of $18 to $21 per trip.

... the Bart/ Oakland people mover costs $137M per mile

"The Sugar House line is an excellent example showing what streetcars can do in American cities," says Siemens Rail Systems President Michael Cahill. "The economic development spurred by such lines is and will be considerable. When you have streetcars, you have on and off traffic; you have pedestrianism, and you attract bars and restaurants, which create a vibrancy in a city." Cahill quips, "Bars and restaurants follow people."

Bombardier, for its part, can point to Toronto as an example of supplying Flexity Freedom 100% low-floor streetcars for Toronto Transit Commission's legacy lines, while Flexity LRT variants are destined for newer LRT lines in the Greater Toronto area.

More such municipal "two-fer" business potential is likely. West Sacramento's proposed streetcar line will link with—and possibly be run by—Sacramento's Regional Transit District, which operates LRT serving the California state capital. Tempe, Ariz., served by Valley Metro LRT, seeks to build a 2.6-mile streetcar line augmenting LRT service in the Phoenix suburb. As plans for a new Hudson-Bergen Light Rail stop revive, Hoboken, N.J., is pondering a streetcar route to link the new station down its main commercial street en route to Hoboken Terminal, a major intermodal hub.

Competition among suppliers therefore will remain intense, with Alstom (Ottawa), Brookville Equipment Corp. (Dallas streetcar), CAF USA (vehicles in Boston, Cincinnati, and Kansas City), Kinkisharyo, and United Streetcar LLC (Tucson, Ariz., and Washington, D.C.) bid for streetcar and LRT contracts as project possibilities mount. To be decided, possibly by the end of August: a car manufacturer for Detroit's M1 Rail, the Motor City's first modern streetcar line, for which construction started last month.

Complicating matters, at least for streetcar sales, are rising demands for options to traditional cars powered by overhead wire, as municipalities take an increasingly greater proactive role, and sometimes fiscal stake, in determining their needs. (See sidebar above.) Various dual-powered vehicle specification have flooded the marketplace, with cities such as Washington, D.C., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., making it a priority consideration. Dallas' Oak Cliff neighborhood already has established the U.S. precedent, as it awaits four modern dual-power Liberty streetcars from Brookville Equipment Corp., due to begin revenue service next year.

Not that the customers automatically see the differences when it comes to rail submodes or modal power. Jason Kuehn, associate partner, vice present, transportation practice, for consultant Oliver Wyman, Inc., notes pointedly, "I don't think most people would notice." What riders do care about, he says, is the permanence of an LRT or streetcar route compared with buses. "If an area is unfamiliar, most people will opt for a fixed right-of-way, one they can see. Buses don't offer that," he says.

Is the preference for LRT over bus really significant? "Absolutely," Kuehn says. "Light rail [also] tends to connect major important places; stadia, shopping malls, airports." Travelers know, or at least intuit, that, he asserts.

Siemens' Cahill agrees. "The difference in passengers' perception between a bus line and a streetcar line is the permanence; a bus could get redirected." And it's not just potential passengers who care, he points out. "A bus line doesn't give business the confidence it might want. Fixed stations and fixed guideways do just that." SOURCE - RAILWAY AGE

[thelakelander]

^Oh I'm definitely not wishing for it. APMs are pretty expensive. IMO, we're better off with transit modes that can serve a much larger area at a much lower cost.

[simms3]

Article on new 171 for-sale townhouse development that broke ground today in West Oakland, but also as per most articles on Oakland, highlights the challenges.  Still contend it's a city that is another good example in a long list of examples of cities facing steep challenges not unlike those found in Jacksonville, and finding ways to tackle some of them.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2015/10/west-oakland-housing-condos-city-ventures.html

The 2008 recession was also devastating, with numerous homeowners suffering with foreclosures. Investors have purchased homes at steep discounts with the intent of capitalizing as rents rise. Neil Sullivan's REO Homes has paid for repairs on homes that it doesn't own in West Oakland in an effort to gentrify the neighborhood faster and boost rents. (This reporter also lives in West Oakland.)

Crime remains a concern in West Oakland. Last week, artist Antonio Ramos was shot and killed while painting a mural in West Oakland. The New York Times covered the story and cited the incident as another setback amid burgeoning investment. The paper also made yet another comparison of Oakland to Brooklyn, an oversimplification that ignores many of the governmental and financial differences between the regions. (For one, Brooklyn is part of a five-borough city government with a $78.5 billion budget in 2016 and immense resources for affordable housing and other services. Oakland has a $2.4 billion budget for two years and barely any money for affordable housing.)

This sort of national coverage has a real influence on what investors decide to fund projects in Oakland, according to land brokers. At least one major housing deal fell apart due to protests last year.

[finehoe]

Gentrification transforming face of Oakland

The movement of middle-class people into low-income neighborhoods is profoundly and rapidly reshaping the urban core of the Bay Area, from San Francisco's Mission District to the farthest reaches of East Oakland, according to a sweeping report released Tuesday.

It's called gentrification, and those most adversely affected - the poor and working class, African Americans and Latinos - are suffering financially as well as physically, according to the report, "Development Without Displacement: Resisting Gentrification in the Bay Area."

Oakland lost almost half of its African American population from 1990 to 2011, and fewer African Americans own homes, says the report from Causa Justa, an Oakland housing advocacy group, and the Alameda County Public Health Department. Rents in neighborhoods that were once predominantly African American, such as North Oakland and West Oakland, have risen so high they're now closing in on those in Rockridge and Montclair.

In fact, Oakland had some of the country's highest rents and rent increases in 2013, real estate data show.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Gentrification-transforming-face-of-Oakland-5387273.php

[simms3]

Another interesting article comparing the leadership in SF that has brought the Warriors over from Oakland to the leadership in Oakland, which is struggling to keep the Raiders.  It's a very good tit for tat piece that leaves out important details, but calls out important truths.

Tale of two cities: Warriors, S.F. get creative, while Raiders, Oakland go silent

...As I've written before, the appearance now and over the past two decades has been no leadership from the city, the county, Raiders boss Mark Davis or A's managing partner Lew Wolff.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco ...

Like him or not, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee pulled off the political equivalent of a triple-double Tuesday with a deal between the Warriors, UCSF and city.

Lee helped hammer out a deal with the city's largest employer and a signature project that creates a plan that doesn't appear to use any public money and, with an arena challenge that really was shaping up as a de facto referendum on the Ed Lee regime, he undercut the competition.

What's more, the Warriors' arena strategy has been much like if Steve Kerr drew up the team's response to challenges in the Western Conference finals and NBA Finals: watch, listen and adjust. When the Warriors' initial plan to move to the Embarcadero was met by strong, deep, community-based opposition, the team (and Lee's administration and powerful friends) shifted to Mission Bay.

When opposition with ties to the arena's potential neighbor — the University of California, San Francisco — emerged this spring, the Warriors and the city stayed in the game. They tweaked designs for the privately funded development, which includes two office towers and a Union Square-like plaza with restaurants, with city staff and the Warriors often standing side by side.

And it wasn't just the Warriors' politically savvy community outreach team. Warriors President Rick Welts has attended several neighborhood meetings and is willing to answer direct questions.

In the end, the Warriors and the city listened to those who like the project as well as those who still worry about how 18,050 basketball fans will blend with hundreds of UCSF hospital employees, patients and their families. Not to mention the hundreds more UCSF students and faculty who already often feel trapped when there are San Francisco Giants games less than a half-mile down Third Street at AT&T Park.

That's been the beef all along by the Mission Bay Alliance, though maybe the group of UCSF benefactors, nurses union and faculty spent too much time putting it in those terms. The group still could file a legal challenge to the city's environmental impact report on the arena development, but the deal announced Tuesday between the Warriors, UCSF and the city, left alliance spokesman Sam Singer calling UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood a "sell out."

The deal creates a fund of at least $10 million annually — fed by Warriors arena receipts — that would be spent on a range of potential traffic solutions, including new light-rail cars and increased train and bus service and more traffic control officers. What's more, the deal sets a "special circumstances cap" of 12 arena events of 12,500 people or more that conflict with Giants' games — if there are ongoing traffic and congestion problems during dual events.

It may be a flawed solution, but it's a creative one, that keeps public money on the sideline and moves a key project toward a groundbreaking early next year and a Warriors tip-off for the 2018-19 season.

At this point, we don't know where the Raiders will play even next year. It's up to Schaaf, Cappio, Alameda County — and the Raiders and A's — to demonstrate the same kind of leadership as Lee and the Warriors.

Just highlights, very high level, the leadership challenges that Oakland also faces, amongst its crime issues and hot-handed politics.  If Oakland ends up keeping the Raiders, it won't be due to some miracle (or mere proximity to San Francisco), there will be a story there.