 |
Re: ENOUGH!!!! Its not a conspiracy
Author: fkrock
Date: 03-26-2016 - 16:36
THERE WAS NO CONSPIRACY OF ANY KIND INVOLVING BUILDING BART. Any statements to the contrary are pure nonsense. I personally am a little tired of seeing these kind of notions repeated. Let's take a quick look at history:
The Bay Area Rapid Transit District was created in 1957 by the California Legislature. A $792 million bond issue was approved by voters in the 1962 general election. An additional $133 million came from Bay Bridge toll revenue. Additional money from other sources was added later. BART retained a joint venture of Parsons-Brinckerhoff-Tudor-Bechtel to design the system and manage construction. They were ordered to investigate all known forms of rapid transit and recommend the best for BART. They investigated monorail, rubber tire vehicles, and many other types of vehicles.
They decided on metal wheel on steel rail with 5' 6" track gauge would be best. In 1964 construction started on a test track in Concord on the old Sacramento Northern right of way to conduct experiments to determine what would work best for BART.
The important point is design decisions were made as a result of experiments. The designers attempted to start from scratch and were not committed to any old technology. In my opinion the biggest mistake made was assuming that modern technology would be more reliable than it was and few provisions were made in the design of the tracks for places to remove dead trains to allow following trains to pass by. Old streetcar systems usually had a number of spur tracks to park defective cars.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit District was created in 1957 by the California Legislature. A $792 million bond issue was approved by voters in the 1962 general election. An additional $133 million came from Bay Bridge toll revenue. Additional money from other sources was added later. BART retained a joint venture of Parsons-Brinckerhoff-Tudor-Bechtel to design the system and manage construction. They were ordered to investigate all known forms of rapid transit and recommend the best for BART. They investigated monorail, rubber tire vehicles, and many other types of vehicles.
They decided on metal wheel on steel rail with 5' 6" track gauge would be best. In 1964 construction started on a test track in Concord on the old Sacramento Northern right of way to conduct experiments to determine what would work best for BART.
The important point is design decisions were made as a result of experiments. The designers attempted to start from scratch and were not committed to any old technology. In my opinion the biggest mistake made was assuming that modern technology would be more reliable than it was and few provisions were made in the design of the tracks for places to remove dead trains to allow following trains to pass by. Old streetcar systems usually had a number of spur tracks to park defective cars.
