On BART's and BAHFA's costly, useless, ever-delayed projects
Recently retired Cato Institute policy analyst and Opp Now contributor Marc Joffe, in a tongue-in-cheek X post, announces that Bay Area's Rapid Transit District and Housing Finance Authority are merging. (And thank goodness: this is satire.) Their next project? A $100 billion subway that—if we're lucky—gets completed by 2057.
BREAKING: Bay Area Agencies Announce Merger and Massive New Project
To increase funding for transit and housing, the Bay Area Rapid Transit District and the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority plan to merge and collaborate on new transit and housing measures. The combined entity will be known as the Bay Area Rapid Financing Authority and will use the acronym BARF.
BARF’s initial plan is to place a $100 billion, nine county bond measure on the 2026 ballot to fund a new subway tunnel connecting Alameda, Downtown San Francisco, and the Outer Richmond District. At either end of the new underground line will be Transit Oriented Developments (TOD), each consisting of seven fifty-story apartment towers. Ground floor spaces in these buildings will be devoted to navigation centers, cannabis dispensaries, and bicycle parts exchanges. With all components built on site with unionized workers earning prevailing wages and working under project labor agreements, the project is expected to be completed in 2057, just after Bay Area homeowners have fully repaid the bonds.
Since $100 billion will not be sufficient to fully fund this ambitious project, BARF officials plan to solicit a major federal grant from the incoming Harris/Walz Administration. They are also planning Regional Measure 6 for the 2028 Bay Area ballot which will harmonize sales taxes throughout the region at 12.5%. The additional tax revenue will flow to BARF not only for the new subway, but also for a regional traffic calming plan that will remove several area freeways while installing bike lanes and speed humps on the remainder.
Incoming BARF Executive Director John Smith applauded the plan as an essential investment in the Bay Area’s future. “While most of us will be dead before this infrastructure comes online, it’ll be great to know that our grandchildren will be able to make easy, car free trips to downtown San Francisco even if it continues to be a dystopian hellscape at that time.
[Editor's note: The above article is satire.]
Read the whole thing here.
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