Oakland Airport Connector

As part of the complicated funding swaps BART staff arranged with regional and state transportation planners to proceed with the Oakland Airport Connector following the loss of $70 million in federal stimulus dollars due to civil rights deficiencies, the transit operator was hoping to get a federal loan with a low interest rate and a favorable interest payment schedule.

After decades of political wrangling, BART is on the verge of building the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC), a $484 million, 3.2 mile automated people mover that will connect the Coliseum BART Station with the Oakland international Airport. BART held a ceremonial groundbreaking yesterday with most of the significant East Bay political establishment, two weeks before the agency gives the Parsons/Flatiron/Doppelmayr team the order to proceed with design and construction.

At a hastily scheduled board meeting today, BART's directors once again voted to approve the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC), this time granting General Manager Dorothy Dugger the flexibility to proceed with the contract, despite several outstanding sources of funding still unresolved.

On the eve of another significant vote to proceed with the contract to build the controversial Oakland Airport Connector, BART and project supporters received a positive indication from Federal Transit Administration (FTA) head Peter Rogoff of his agency's commitment to give BART $25 million in New Starts funds for the project, a necessary step to close the funding gap resulting from the loss of $70 million in stimulus funds earlier this year.

The fatigue is palpable, but the battle over BART''s Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) is nowhere near its conclusion. That's the message coming out of yet another marathon hearing today at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the region's transportation planning body, over the merits of the airport connector, which I would argue has now become the second most controversial regional transit proposal behind the California High Speed Rail Peninsula alignment.

The Federal Transit Administration has increased the likelihood the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the Bay Area's regional transportation planning and funding body, will undergo a full civil rights investigation after it sent a letter last week [PDF] insisting the MTC turn over documents detailing its protocols for monitoring civil rights practices of the government agencies and private groups it gives federal money. Civil rights and transportation advocates are confident the MTC doesn't have those protocols in place and argue the FTA investigation will show a pattern of discriminatory funding of transportation projects in the Bay Area that dates back decades.

While BART will soon take a funding plan to its Board of Directors for the Oakland Airport Connector, Carl Anthony, the founder of Urban Habitat and a fellow in the Department of Geography at Berkeley, has called on the agency to wait to proceed with funding the OAC until the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) deems the project compliant with federal Title VI civil rights standards.

Even though BART is not in compliance with the Federal Transportation Administration's (FTA) Title VI civil rights regulations, the agency has sought funding from numerous local, regional, state and federal outlets to continue the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) project, a three-mile elevated tramway that would connect the Oakland Airport with the Oakland Coliseum Station.

One development lost in the media feeding frenzy around the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) denying BART's request of $70 million for the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) was a letter the FTA sent to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the Bay Area's planning body, initiating a review of its civil rights policies [PDF].