I can't imagine Livermore residents would be SO dumb to even consider a BART STATION in the middle of their town. Sheer madness. I have always support Livermore getting BART service, but certainly hope they do not IF they would be so arrogant, destructive, and stupid to allow an overhead cut-thru Pleasanton....talk about a permanent WAR forever !! Contemptable !! Why isn't BART access like Castro Valley & Pleasanton acceptable. Why would anybody even want Livermore to look like downtown New York City ??? What is wrong with a CHARMING ARTS CENTER SHUTTLE. This discussion is an outrage. Guaranteed KICKING out of office, Kamena, Haggerty...anybody who would participate in harming every resident in Pleasanton...and I would think MAJORITY in Livermore would not want that eyesore in their downtown area. It belongs in the middle of the freeway...like everywhere else !!

I can't imagine Livermore residents would be SO dumb to even consider the BS that ANGRY has spit out. Typical pro-sprawl NIMBY who thinks transit is best surrounded by massive parking lots. To say that transit should not go where people go is what I consider "arrogant, destructive, and stupid". BART would be an "eyesore" in a downtown area? Building a BART station would turn Livermore into New York City? Give me a break. Totally automobile-dependent, suburban life isn't the only lifestyle, and a downtown, even in a small town, is certainly a place we should be promoting direct, pedestrian friendly transit access.

I don't know how you get NIMBY out of it. It's Livermore's downtown that will look like an inner-city slum. What 'group' switched this fabulous BART service TO Livermore idea, into a 'destroy TWO communties' project. Sometimes a rotten zealot can spoil a grand opportunity !! Let's face it, an overhead rail isn't exactly like the 'hanging gardens of Babalyon. Sorry, you have no 'home community' standards.
I still think a horse drawn carriage to the art center would be charming. Is that the group that is going to cause this ENTIRE project to go down ??? This could wind up being the biggest range war in a century!.

Right, a horse drawn carriage. There's a real 21st century mode of transportation that's going to link our communities! If your idea of "home community" is living like it's the 1800's, I'm glad you don't speak for the entire region. Let's face it: neither Livermore nor Pleasanton is Paris. We are not talking about preserving cultural relics hundreds of years old here. What we need is modern transportation, not self-delusions that our communities are so special as they are that we should never allow them to change.

The biggest flaw in your logic is to link the idea of anything remotely urban to an "inner-city slum". One BART station will turn downtown Livermore into "downtown New York City"? Please, leave your wild exaggerations at home. Having good transit access and dense, lively, pedestrian friendly neighborhoods downtown is not a bad thing. The idea that building BART tracks will "destroy TWO communities" is pure garbage.

Of course overhead rail is no "hanging gardens of Babylon", but neither is I-580. Building a bridge over half the highway will destroy our wonderful views... of what? Ten lanes of beautiful concrete covered with stunning bumper-to-bumper traffic? Hang some plants from the rail bridge if that will make you feel any better. As someone who has lived adjacent to railroad tracks before, I can attest that the supposed damage it does to communities is greatly overblown. Transit connects us, not divides us.

The biggest mistake would be to build the station far from where everyone who uses it lives. That means everyone who wants to ride BART has to drive long distances to the station, adding more traffic, defeating much of the purpose of transit.

Hey, chill you two.

Had this discussion happened about 30 to 40 years ago then we could have discussed a line south of I580 into east Pleasanton and downtown Livermore. But, it's too late. The BART lines today should go along I580 to Greenville. At that point, the parking lot should accommodate the commuters from the central valley.

I know some of the comments are being ironic. That said, I must add that horse-drawn carriages are a 19th-century conveyance and should have no part in 21st-century cities and towns, or communities, where there are motor vehicles. They spook easily and become unwitting weapons when frightened. In most spooking accidents, humans are injured, and sometimes killed. Maybe this idea is being floated in jest. If so, can we please keep it that way.

I think that the suggestion that there should be a shuttle to the downtown Livermore theatre is somewhat silly. Taking extra connections like that is annoying. If I get on BART to go see a show in SF, I like to take just BART and not have to deal with any other transit connections. Sure, make it a horse-drawn carriage to dress it up. That doesn't change the fact that public transit doesn't get you to where you want to go.

A BART station in downtown Livermore presents a unique opportunity to create a wonderful walkable community around downtown setting a textbook example for sustainable transit oriented planning in America. I already love what the City has done during the redevelopment efforts of the past few years that have converted downtown from a four-lane freeway to a welcoming and cute destination. But it is still a downtown on life-support. There is no sustainable traffic throughout the day to support the kind of business you expect to find in a healthy downtown: produce stalls, a delicatessen, a small grocery store, a bakery, a cheese store, or a butcher. Try to buy a carton of eggs or a loaf of bread in downtown. Impossible.

Most people think that Europe and Japan have great public transport. Well ... their subways, light-rails, and trains goes right to where people live, work, shop, and play: downtown.

A pure highway alignment along I-580 is something that i – and all urban planners and city officials i talked to – strongly dislike because it would mean to (yet again) repeat the mistakes of the (auto-centric) planning in the past.

A BART station in downtown Livermore certainly should not come at the expense of Pleasanton residents. My "preferred" alignment keeps BART on I-580 all the way out of Pleasanton until Livermore's (soon to be demolished) Portola Avenue exit. From there it should go underground to downtown and then eventually resurface to continue along the railroad to a station at either Vasco or Greenville.

What happened to the "failed" Dublin/I-680 station ? An Isabel/I-580 station (for Los Positas College and Business Park), a downtown station and an "end" station at Greeville for the commuters makes some sense. However, do we trust BART/CalTrans engineers when they can't get Dublin correct ? The least intrusive/risky/costly route is along I-580, unfortunately. Otherwise, we won't see BART to Livermore in our lifetimes !

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