Each day as I commute into Alameda from San Leandro, I travel along Doolittle drive past the Oakland Airport on a stretch of roadway I like to call the Watermelon Coast.
See Blog posting http://activerain.com/blogsview/394965/Commuting-along-the-Watermelon
I often get to thinking that this would be an easy way to get the BART system over to the city of Alameda. Here's how you do it.
The Oakland Airport has long been trying to get a hard link from the Oakland Coliseum station. There was at one point in time a proposal for a monorail that would do the trick.
There has even been mention of a complet BART line also doing the same thing.
I say that the line would be more productive if it would have three stations, Oakland Coliseum -- Oakland International Airport -- Alameda.
How would you get BART to the island of Alameda? You don't that's the kicker here. The route for the line would be the same as what had been planned for many times before to the airport from the coliseum. The difference is from the return line from the airport the train would take a detour down Ron Cowan Parkway and making a right turn on Harbor Bay Parkway. The trains could run down Harbor Bay Parkway and the staion could be located on that landfill mound across from the golf course near the Bay Farm Island bridge.
After picking up passangers the trains would return to the Oakland International Airport and then back to the Oakland Coliseum station.
I personally like the idea of using a monorail. Monorail vehicles are fairly standardized (alweg-bombardier) and the concrete beamway construction is quicker and faster to build. The existing BART system is a one-of-a-kind gauge, which make's it much more expensive and time consuming to build. To learn more about monorails please go to the monorail society at www.monorails.org
With the price of gas I hope it gets done...