Imagine taking BART to Ocean Beach, or Sausalito, or Grant and Columbus Avenue in North Beach. It was a serious possibility, at least at one sweet, naïve and overly optimistic moment in time.

The Comprehensive Plan for Regional Rapid Transit, drawn up in 1956, proposed such fantasy stops, along with many others that did actually make it into the BART map as we know it today.

RELATED: Marin County could have had BART, but backroom politics got in the way

Jake Berman, a designer and artist who lives in New York but grew up in San Francisco, took the mid-century plans and decided to present them in a more visually appealing way than the block-zoned BART map that ran in an issue of the San Francisco Chronicle on January 6, 1956.

The plans, as first designed on that day to the reading public, presented a "123-mile interurban network" of trains that, at peak times, would "be only 90 seconds apart, and even at off-peak hours no more than 15 minutes apart." On BART, it was promised, you'd be able to get from Powell Street in San Francisco to either Santa Rosa, Napa or San Jose in just over an hour, or Palo Alto in 43 minutes. Note, the system map above does not extend that far.

RELATED: The little-told story about the BART seat-slashing scam that was part of an upholstery racket

Engineers, the reporter continued, had "been working for two years to make it faster, cheaper and probably more convenient than your own private automobile."

Obviously, things didn't exactly shake out that way. But we can dream.

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.

