Lafayette BART station eliminating 19 parking spaces

LAFAYETTE — Finding parking at the Lafayette BART station, already a challenge, will soon become harder as the city plans to take out 19 spaces to add more bicycle slots.

The Lafayette lot fills up most workdays before 7:30 a.m., and there are 3,819 people on a waiting list for a BART parking space at the station, according to the transit agency.

The 19 parking spaces are being sacrificed for a new bike station with 60 bicycle slots, a pedestrian pathway, a turnaround for vehicles, a plaza and public art at the station. Work on the project, called Town Center, is set to begin this summer and will take a year to complete, according to Lafayette city spokesman Jeffrey Heyman.

The Lafayette council approved the Town Center because it wants to encourage alternative modes of transportation such as biking and walking, which city officials hope will reduce congestion downtown and along Happy Valley and Deer Hill roads, Heyman said.

“The city believes that the tradeoff of these 19 slots is a real plus and bonus to help provide safer access to pedestrians to and from the BART station, to bicycle riders to the station … which will lessen traffic congestion in downtown Lafayette,” Heyman said.

At the May 13 council meeting, Vice Mayor Susan Candell cast the sole dissenting vote against the public art project design called “Dandelion Seeds.” Candell said that while she liked the public art, losing 19 parking spaces was just confusing to her.

“I just don’t get the project,” Candell said at the meeting.

The 19 BART permit parking spaces being removed are out of 118 spaces in BART’s south parking lot. In 2014, the city met with BART and East Bay Municipal Utility District, which owns the land where the south parking lot is located, for plans to create an entry to downtown Lafayette. It also provides pedestrian and bicycle access linking the downtown area to the BART station. Both BART and EBMUD supported the city’s plans for the project.

The cost of the Town Center project is estimated at $1.47 million and is funded by grants, BART and city funds, according to a Lafayette staff report. The $230,000 cost of the public art project will be paid by developer fees. Heyman said about $12,500 of city funds are being spent on the project.

Heyman said the 19 parking spaces represent a little over 1 percent of the total parking spaces at the Lafayette BART station. He said the station has about 1,600 parking spaces.

Currently, about 3,750 riders enter the Lafayette BART station each weekday. Of those, 1,050 commuters, or 28 percent, access the station by walking or biking, according to the Lafayette city website.