How much is metropolitan road space worth?

Let's look at the Oakland. CA Airport connector.

The airport carries 9 million passengers/yr, in bad years. Of those, 20% want rapid travel on BART connector. 1.8 million two way rides, net $3/ride and one has a $10 million/yr income stream. So, what kind of connector speed will make the connector successful. Well, we would like to run the system at 50 mph, get them too and from BART in 20 minutes, say.

So what is to lose from a BART offer to buy guaranteed road space? Just offer the county $8 million a year to run these passengers across surface streets.

That money, with Buy America subsidies, would generate $120 million in investment. What investment? Use the surface median, take it over and do the advanced tech BRT. Leave it to the tech folks to guarantee the 50 MPH safe BRT passage on a 2 hour basis.

The county gets enough surplus cash from the deal to put in a few of their own high tech BRT for local runs. The whole corridor should thrive.

I have said it before, these BRT connectors can bring millions of passengers to BART from cross sections of the east bay. In each connector, let the technology guarantee 15 minutes, constant velocity, scheduled congestion controlled routes. The remaining auto traffic would actually be less congested, the entire aggregate of flow being slightly ore synchronous.