The nation's top transportation official says the federal government will be ready to help if the Bay Area seeks funding for a second transbay BART tube.
Anthony Foxx visited San Francisco on Wednesday, and in response to a question about the federal government's willingness to fund such a project, here's what he said:
“We rely very heavily on the consensus to form at the local level for various transit projects, and I think we’ve shown a willingness to take some pretty aggressive steps to help, and I would expect this to be no different.”
Since the first tube opened in 1974, the Bay Area’s population has swelled from 4.3 million to 7.6 million today. During the same period, the number of weekday trips on BART has grown nearly eightfold, from an average of 57,000 to 434,000.
As the system has gotten busier and congestion has gotten worse on the region's freeways, transportation planners have floated the idea of building a second tube to ease overcrowding on BART and roadways.