What If BART Crossed the Golden Gate Bridge?

The Lost Plan for Rapid Transit to Marin County—and Why It Never Happened.

There’s almost nothing that a vast majority of Americans agree on—except for their love of Dolly Parton (75%) and apple pie (78%). But one thing once had an even higher approval rating: in 1956, a proposal to extend BART over the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County received an astounding 87.7% approval rating when the original five-county BART plan was under consideration.

1961 original BART Plan

The original plan included seven lines:

• Peninsula Line – San Francisco Mission to Palo Alto

• Southern Alameda County Line – Fremont to Downtown Oakland

• Downtown Oakland Spine – Broadway in Oakland

• Central Contra Costa Line – Downtown Oakland to Concord

• Berkeley-Richmond Line – Downtown Oakland to Richmond

• San Francisco Downtown Lines – Two lines running down Market and Post Streets, converging at Montgomery Street

The original design of the BART system was outlined in a 1957 final report by the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit Commission. The commission, formed six years earlier by the state legislature, was composed of 26 elected officials from the nine Bay Area counties. Its final report concluded that the "least-cost" solution to traffic congestion was to create a five-county rapid transit district, tasked with building and operating a high-speed rail network linking major commercial centers with suburban areas.

(While the estimated costs below are adjusted for today’s dollars based on 1960s projections, they are likely inaccurate based on historical precedent. However, the relative ranking of expense remains reasonable.)

But just as quickly as BART was proposed, the project suddenly began to unravel…