I used to ride BART as a kid from Fremont. It's crazy that in such a dense and populous region known for urbanism and progressivism, that so many BART stations have so much open parking after 50 years! FIFTY YEARS! It's no wonder California has such a serious housing crisis if even the most obvious and in-your-face plots of land for dense housing have remained empty and untouched since the Nixon administration!

Bart in the thumbnail for this video about BART is very cursed. I like it.

2:32 i went to Milpitas BART back in January of this year and it was epic! That station was very beautiful when I visited Milpitas BART for the first time.

I enjoy your videos, very well done. Regarding single family homes, why are we still building them? Because people would rather have a single family home over an apartment or condo due to space and noise concerns. If someone has kids they want a backyard for them to play in. Additionally, single family homes generally appreciate in value over time faster than a condo or townhome. Regarding parking at stations, it is a necessary evil. Pre-pandemic, parking was difficult at most BART Stations. I know I opted to drive to my destination over taking BART because the station parking would be full. Looking forward to the next video, keep up the good work.

Hey! The last station on the blue line is the one I use. It's good to see that between Dublin and Pleasanton, I wound up in the less shite one. South of the 580 is just so incredibly depressing. I have a fantasy of the 580 getting torn down all the way from Fallon to the Bay Bridge and its entire right of way getting reconnected by a rail-oriented corridor. Maybe not the entire 10 miles down the freeway ROW between Dublin and Castro Valley, but at least the parts that have development on either side.

Great video! There is an unbelievable amount of potential for new TOD across the East Bay

union city is one of my favorites - it's close to the hills and has busses to basically everywhere

Overall, I really appreciate your series on BART. I grew up in Castro Valley and remember a 6th grade field trip to the as yet unopened Lake Merritt station and “command center” in 1972. I also feel it is appropriate to point out that Castro Valley is not a city, it has no local government. It is part of unincorporated Alameda county. 13:49

I doubt that they will demolish the arena. Since no team currently plays in Oakland their is no need to build new, rather close the existing one for a few years to retrofit. The roof is one of the best with its concave shape so I don’t see reason to tear down. SF has the brand new chase center so Oakland would need a lot of money to compete. So cheaper retrofit is better

Great video! You mentioned it briefly, but the Tesla factory is a huge destination for Warm Springs. Tons of workers are going to warm springs instead of from it.i wish the connection was a little better, but it is definitely walking distance. There are plans to densify and build housing in the area around Fremont, specifically the offices you mentioned and the strip mall next to it. No plans for the BART parking lot, but considering there is parking on both sides, I could see one side being kept and the other used for a better purpose. One thing I'm surprised you didn't mention for Union City is that ACE is building a regional rail station adjacent to it, with service to Merced (to connect with HSR) and Chico.

Milpitas is the station I take to work when I'm in the Bay Area. I remember seeing it being built over the years and it's quite an excellent transit center overall, with convenient connections to VTA busses and light rail. I actually live closer to the Berryessa station, but it's like a 40 minute walk to get to it from my place, so I opt to spend the extra $2.50 and 10 minute walk to the light rail station and take that to Milpitas to catch BART. I think Milpitas station is nicer in most cases, but the Berryessa station being integrated with the flea market is pretty nice. IIRC it's actually free to get in to the flea market from the station side (as opposed to driving and parking, which was $10). There's still quite a lot of empty land around Berryessa so it'll be interesting to see what will be built there. It's good to see many of the cities already have plans in the works for making the land around the station mixed-use. I pass by all the intermediate cities between San Jose and San Francisco on the way to work, but I've never actually properly been to any of them, so it would be nice if there were shops and other destinations near these stations to take a trip to.

great video!

Impeccably presented. Thank. you. (I am watching from the Netherlands.)

The thing with Castro Valley is that it’s not a city, it’s in unincorporated Alameda County.

Letsss gooooooooooooooo pretty hype vid. Guessing your going to go deeper into the SJ to Santa Clara bart connection in a later vid

hadn't known how green or verdant those very hills there can become..!

I'm interested in seeing how San Leandro turns out. I went by there on one of my recent trips to the bay area and while it's very much not there yet on density, it felt like it had more of an identity architecturally compared to other similar cities, and I hope the planned developments lean into that.

Let’s goooo

Great video! TODGod never disappoints. And holy crap does Dublin have a lot of TOD! Did not realize how much new housing they have there. But I guess this is what happens when you're one of the fastest growing "cities" on the continent for 30 years straight! Tripling in size is not something that you see a lot of urban areas in the US do every day. Give them time and they'll catch up to one of the three big Bay cities. (As always, a small note. In addition to the BART planned developments there are a toooooon of proposed non-BART developments that are much harder to track. I know that it's impossible for you to track down each and every proposed or permitted building with over 30 units near BART, but it's probably worth noting that these things are being planned and built and that BART isn't the only game in town when it comes to development around their stations.)

I follow people who live in the apartments near Berryessa and Milpitas BART. It's mostly people with high paying jobs or have a lot of retirement money that live there. One of who is a classmate from HS who is now married for a year.

I love your videos? After you finish the BART and other Bay Area cities can you do a video on Phoenix light rail?

Interesting to see how the movement to get a San Antonio infill station between Fruitvale and Lake Merit will go.

Bay Fair has to be one of my least favorite stations. When transferring going towards the south bay from SF, I'll just get off at Lake Merritt. Just feels safer.

When are you going to talk about the Yellow and Red lines sections? I am hooping for those sectiosn in the future!

Your discord invite in the description is invalid btw

Why does Bay Fair feel like it was designed and built in one weekend with 4 dollars?

So - some commentary as a Dublin resident... West Dublin station is going to be off the new Downtown Dublin plan that the City recently adopted/amended...it should bring more density to that area and alao hopefully increase pedestrian and bike access...they can and should do more, but its a good start... That said, the lack of retail under the apartments just off the west Dublin station makes it kinda blah to walk thru tbh. They arent active or vibrant at all in my xp... hopefully once the big box stores in the area get redeveloped, it might activiate the area better. Dublin/Pleasanton Ststion does a slighter better job of this on the Dublin side but even there, the community focused retail is like an after thought... Also, yeah...Dublin likes its SFHs but a lot of the ones they built clos-ish to BART have really small lot sizes and are relatively dense considering they are SFH neighborhoods...but yeah ..would be better used for other housing types in close proximity to the stations... That said, Pleasanton could do a lot better at both stations...the only things on the West Pleasanton side of the station is a bunch of corporate offices and the mall...a few townhomes after all that but they are quite far from the station tbh... also the City of Dublin is very supportive of SB9 and ADU adds in the older neighborhoods that are on the west side of the City where most of the neighborhoods are HOA free and low density Residential Zoned...

9:50 Would be curious if a similar connector to SJC Airport could be added to the future Santa Clara Station at the end of the BART/VTA San Jose Extension, located next to the existing CalTrain Station, a sister line to the OAK Beige line as it were. The Airport terminals are less than 2 miles away from the station in a straight line, however, that would require tunneling under the runway which sounds like a expensive, logistical nightmare. An Elevated Guideway following the approximate route of the VTA 60 bus could possibly be more feasible, all be it longer. Either way, Silicon Valley Phase 2 isn't projected to open for another decade so there's some time for planning & funding

Love all the new development you showcase in these videos but some of these complexes are horrendously ugly it’s insane. Def a step up from a parking lot but I wish that our society valued beautiful design

I remember having a pizza party on the Bart last year from Berryessa back to the city. Good times

Castro Valley is not a city. It’s an unincorporated community in Alameda County.

Fruitvale station is definitely the one nobody wants to be associated with because of... reasons.

The thing that's most striking about so many of these stations is how they were designed to fail: stations built with no direct access, in the middle of paved, unshaded fields (in our climate!). The politics that enables us to allocate funding to such expensive projects and then make them useless to riders just makes me want to vomit. Bay area urban planning all seems to be about how we can make daily life worse and stick it to our neighbours, for the highest price possible. And then we have three major airports in the Bay Area and not one of them is directly connected to transit? WTF? How is that supposed to work? I swear it can cost as much to get to the airport as it does to take the flight. I hope the future is better, but looking at the politics it seems more likely transit will be made illegal, along with healthcare and education. We really, really hate ourselves.

I haven’t finished the video but yikes, Milpitas station had so much potential and yet is still so poorly designed. It has no points of interest beyond the mall, which requires a transfer to VTA. As of now they have no retail, restaurants, walking areas, not even a cafe to get coffee. It’s a great way to build housing but you have to remember that people need to buy groceries and run day to day errands and it’s evident that the station is still designed as a park and ride. There isn’t a community by the station that benefits from BART. It’s surrounded by expressways. You can’t even get to the hotel across the street because there isn’t a crosswalk. It’s hostile pedestrian development designed to profit off high density. Not good urban planning in my opinion. This goes for most of BARTs TOD that isn’t in SF, Berkeley or Oakland where there is pre-BART development that is walkable.

really? why don't you just move to the place instead of trying to get it along with a l l its bleeding replicants move to you 💡💡💡

(i) I still reckon Frisco as more deserving of the European likeness than (yankee!) Montreal ever could, and (ii) Vancouver is godawfully cheap with tellingly hollow flair..compared to Frisco especially, e.g. 💡💡💡