The E'Ville Eye, an Emeryville centric blog, is promoting a plan to include the West Oakland BART station in the list of Emery-Go-Round bus destinations. The route would head south from Emeryville on Mandela Parkway to 7th Street, the location of the popular BART station.
The blog is hosting a poll of readers about Emery-Go-Round use and the idea of including this new destination for their buses. Emeryville resident Rob Arias, the editor of the E'Ville Eye, plans on presenting the results of the poll to the Transportation Committee at City Hall and the Emery-Go-Round Board of Directors.
The Emery-Go-Round is a free bus service that connects riders to shopping and work destinations mostly in Emeryville. The bus line is paid for by Emeryville businesses and taxpayers. As of now, only the MacArthur BART station is served by the Emery-Go-Round. A new route to West Oakland BART might be added to MacArthur and might supplant it, depending on ridership numbers.
Mr Arias indicated the more people that take part in the poll, the more persuasive the results will be. Tattler readers are encouraged to weigh in and make their opinions be heard by taking the E'Ville Eye poll.
The E'Ville Eye Emery-Go-Round poll is HERE.
This is a terrible idea. The current service is marginal at best. Expanding or revising will only make things worse. How many times have you been left to wait at MacArthur BART beyond the stated arrival times. Also there are other transit connections there as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this Brian! I'm anxious to hear what the community has to say. I think there are plenty of reasons to NOT want this (hopefully our fear of West Oakland is not the driving factor) but I think there are some very strong reasons TO want this. Ultimately it should be about saving people time and reducing traffic in our city I believe.
ReplyDelete-Rob
10 year EWL resident
Do the math...it's an additional mile to west oakland BART that will save you approximately 10 minutes travel.
ReplyDeleteWith emery go round's marginal service, adding or changing routes is one of the worst ideas. Only until service can be provided that is reliable I'd stick with the existing.
If reliability of service is an issue, then that should be addressed separately. In general, a free shuttle to and from West Oakland BART--the first stop in the East Bay from San Francisco--would be enormously useful to Emeryville residents and workers who need to travel to/from the City. We shouldn't confuse the two issues. We all want a reliable service, but let's also have a reliable service that takes us to and from the most useful destinations.
ReplyDelete