urban-planning-partners-BART-to-Livermore.jpg

BART to Livermore

Urban Planning Partners prepared the Project EIR for the proposed BART extension to the City of Livermore, a project that would have connected the existing Dublin/Pleasanton Station to Livermore. The project included evaluation of a nearly 5-mile extension of BART along Interstate-580, along with several alternative alignments and modes. Urban Planning Partners made this thorough analysis happen on schedule by:

  • Bridging the gap between the project’s technical aspects and its public face so that the technical chapters of the EIR were easily understandable to the public

  • Coordinating regularly and seamlessly with subconsultants and BART to address all issues in a proactive, thorough, and legally defensible manner

  • Understanding the larger planning and political issues surrounding the project so responses to comments on the Draft EIR encompassed the full purview required by the project and its decision makers

  • Partnering with BART after the publication of the Draft EIR by hosting three public meetings and preparing community-facing materials to educate the public and decision makers on CEQA and other project planning issues

    The client called the result of this work a “bulletproof” EIR that had no openings to legal challenges. The BART Board certified the EIR in 2018, but ultimately chose not to pursue a project. Their decision was guided by UPP’s thorough analysis and outreach.

    Project Stats

  • 5.5-mile-long proposed extension along Interstate-580

  • 5 project alternatives that were fully analyzed in the EIR at the same level as the proposed project

  • 20 members on the technical expert team, managed by UPP

Why We Liked This Project: CEQA is sometimes siloed, but for this project to be effective, it had to become something more encompassing. Crafting the document to be accessible and understandable to the public and responsive to the political context was an exciting educational opportunity. The entire time we were working on the project, we were thinking about how the extension of BART services could impact hundreds of thousands of people.