A Tale of Two Berkeleys (Episode 7 - BART - Part 4) 

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There really is an enourmous amount of TOD planned for Downtown Berkeley! Once all of that proposed stuff is built, Berkeley will grow by about 20-30% in population. And surprisingly, unlike most other cities in the Bay Area the city of Berkeley actually allows and encourages all those proposed buildings to be built. Every time I'm there there's always a few more new mid-rise or even high-ish rise buildings! I can't believe that I'm saying this given Berkeley's rabidly NIMBY past. The city has been incredibly NIMBY both in recent history when Berkeley essentially banned new construction during 1970s-2010s, and in the early 20th century when the Elmwood district in Berkeley literally invented single family exclusionary zoning. But yeah... they're building a ton of housing now, like actually meaningful increases in their housing stock every year by some single digit percentage points. Incredible!

I fucking love trains

6:58, fun fact that hill isn’t even in el Cerrito, it’s Albany hill… in Albany… but that’s the hill that el Cerrito is named after.

Great Video but I think your definiton of North Bay is confused. Every area / station mentioned in the video is in the East Bay (Alameda and Contra Costa counties). The North Bay is Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Solano and is not served by BART

Minor nitpick: the hill you picture and hint that it might relate to the naming of the City of El Cerrito ... is named Albany Hill - and is entirely within the City of Albany (not El Cerrito)! It's even in a different COUNTY. Albany is in Alameda County and El Cerrito is in Contra Costa County. More substantive nitpick: I was hoping to see a bit of background when you talked about this line. Specifically a bit of history: the portion traversing Berkeley was originally planned as above ground and routed well away from Downtown and away (although not as far away) from the present day Ashby station. Berkeley Citizens felt strongly that BART should go through Downtown Berkeley and voted to assess themselves (as a special assessment on their property taxes) to pay the additional cost to go through Berkeley underground to make this happen!

The first place I lived after moving out of my mom's house in Santa Clara was in the south campus area of Berkeley, and for most of the time I lived there I commuted to San Francisco via BART, walking through campus to get there & back home. Both south campus and downtown were definitely target-rich environments for tasty food. I didn't get to north campus much, but I recall there being a nice zone around there as well. And then you go west and north of downtown, and it's suburbia.

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980 is not the highway that BART runs between, next to the Temescal neighborhood at the MacArthur station. That's Hwy 24. 980 - the one that's being buried - is far south of there, and west of downtown. The area around the MacArthur BART station isn't really "West Oakland" - that's south of the 580 freeway.

Ah yay the area I actually know!

Another amazing overview! Thanks dude! We appreciate all your hard work!

Have you thought of using a TOD rating scale? 1 a TOD desert, 2 TOD lackluster, 3 TOD decent, 4 TOD Alright alright , 5 TOD Paradise 😁

Great video as usual. If all of the downtowns and station areas were like downtown Berkeley for the smaller cities there wouldnt be a housing crisis in the bay area

My one of my best friends lives in Richmond and BART is the only way we can connect. Love how the train gets to Hayward without switching trains. Also have you heard the story about the decline of Bayfair Mall? It's rather sad because no one views subway connected malls as a good thing in the Bay Area now.

I lived for a little less than a year a couple of blocks from the Ashby BART station. One thing I'll say for the parking lot there - it hosts a flea market every Saturday which is where I got a good deal of my furniture (the bits that aren't prefab, that is), along with my cast iron skillets & various other items of cookware, dishes & silverware, and lots of other stuff too. Last time I was there, it was a sorry shadow of its former self, but it may just have been off-season; I'll have to check it out again during the summer. I wonder what'll happen to it when the parking lot is redeveloped.

If you would come to New Jersey and Staten Island, you would find 6 different metro systems between NYC and Philly.

7:59 🤣 FYI, your narration has gotten even better!

None of these stations seems to serve a proper park, though, either presently or in the plans. I'm a great fan of Montreal's Angrignon, Taipei's Daan Park, and so on. We need proper neighbourhoods, but we also need places to chill out!

One thing I noticed you missed about the Ashby Bart station and the push back against TOD dev. There is the Ashby flea market on Saturday and Sunday mornings that is a moderate income source for resellers. The development could end the Ashby flea.

Good stuff! Love the content!

Yes Downtown Berkeley is where the students live.

My Wednesday is made

Note that BART is actually in the Highway 24 median east of 580, including MacArthur through Rockridge stations (and again from Orinda to Walnut Creek of course). 980 is only between 580 and 880. Talk of removing 980 has been going on for years. It Could Happen. But it's unlikely to affect the immediate MacArthur surroundings even if/when it happens. ***ninja'd of course***

I think making a series of housing complexes entirely affordable housing, like is planned at Ashby Station, is a bad idea because you end up with a neighborhood entirely populated by poor people, which is a ghetto. Its going to reaffirm economic segregation by creating a neighborhood people actively avoid and negative public perceptions of dense housing. Mixed-income communities are much preferrable. What they should do instead is have only about half of the units be designated affordable housing to allow a more diverse mix of income levels within the same community.

I live in Antioch and take eBART to work most days for the last two years. PM me if you need info for the next video

go bears 🐻

9:48 Berkeley is not the North Bay, everyone forgets about Marin 😢 (Except I'm eternally thankful you made a video on the SMART train system up there)

I cant recall a single incident where I was stuck in traffic in downtown Oakland.

Soon 🙏😭🙈

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The camera shot at 4:45 looks like it was filmed in 30 fps then down-sampled to 24, and you can really notice the skipped frames in the panning motion - it's very jarring. Please make an effort to correct these issues, Taran Van Hemert's video on the topic is very informative about it, linked below. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-p3Jb3UPAw-w.htmlsi=bek77RFGrH1bCpmp

richmond is not north bay lol

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