The BART Board of Directors voted to approve two multi-million-dollar contracts Thursday — one to build a new police headquarters in downtown Oakland and one to install new fare gates designed to keep people from hopping on trains without paying.
The largest contract the board voted to approve is an initial $8.5 million deal with Bay Area-based Swinerton/Gensler/SKA for the early design phase of the headquarters project.
Swinerton/Gensler/SKA was one of five design and construction teams that bid on the project.
The directors also approved a total sticker price of $83.4 million for the project, which will convert a now-vacant Kaiser Permanente building at 2000 Broadway into a new, 87,000-square-foot Police Department headquarters, with roughly 17,000 square feet of underground parking.
BART bought the building for $26 million and just closed escrow on Wednesday.
The BART Police Department is expected to move into its new space by the end of 2026.
“I think it’s an investment in an asset that this agency can hold for many decades, and I believe that it will increase in value,” said director Mark Foley.
The board also voted to approve a roughly $7.4 million contract with Cupertino Electric Inc. of San Jose to install fare gates designed to keep people from jumping over, ducking under or going around in order to get free BART rides.
Work was scheduled to start this week on updated BART gates at the Fruitvale station in Oakland, with the 24th Street Mission station in San Francisco and Richmond station scheduled to begin work on new gates in September, BART said.
The roughly $90 million project is expected to be complete by the end of 2025.
Big question is how maintenance friendly will new equipment be ? ? ?
Planned and worked on many upgrade projects, have also participated in a couple of projects, planned by others, that were complete cluster FUBARs. On one such project, took two weeks vacation to get away from incompetent supposed electrical engineer to preserve his well being.
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ANY finished project to be considered successful has to be easy to work on, with redrawn prints from marked up as-built drawings from those installing equipment. Final prints and documentation enables easy troubleshooting and repair at 3 am. Would be a very welcome change if bart gets right this time, not holding breath.
Original G, this is totally off-topic, but something you said struck a nerve.
A finished project has to be easy to work on – I agree completely!
The new Bugatti costs $20,000 to do an oil change – you have to disassemble part of the car in order to change the oil. Now, that’s just bad design!
Actually not off topic, know several electricians and an electrical / software engineer.
Vast differences between bart and transit systems in Japan,
both in preventive maintenance and management.
I’ve heard some liberals are calling the BART gate installations as prejudice and racist because they’re starting at the stations that are in predominantly black and brown areas.
But apparently those stations have the highest incident of fare evators jumping the gates. So that’s the problem.
Just remember in our society today you cannot be honest!
Where is the money coming from? Are bart directors appointed or voted in?
LOU,
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They’re voted in, although the article didn’t state which BART Boardmembers voted for these contracts.
Say no to fare hikes and replace the entire board of directors… gross mismanagement … gimme a break
DOMO,
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The urban boardmembers outnumber the suburban boardmembers, so the urban boardmembers control what usually gets passed.
Hopefully they are paying attention to the Areas with the MOST Fare Jumpers and putting in New gates there, as Fast as POSSIBLE … Does NOT make ant sense to place them in areas with few Jumpers before the High Jumper areas are covered..
Read Badge1104!