SACRAMENTO — In another attempt to ease the housing crisis gripping the Bay Area, a state proposal to turn some of BART’s vast parking lots into bustling developments with thousands of new homes has pitted housing and business interests against cities and others worried about giving the transit agency new land-use powers.

The bill, which could be taken up in the state Senate as soon as Thursday, has been touted by supporters as a solution to the Bay Area’s traffic and housing ills — and panned by opponents, including some East Bay cities, as a misguided idea that would undermine local control.

The proposal would remove bureaucratic and political obstacles that have blocked or slowed much-needed development at the stations, said one of its authors, Assemblyman Tim Grayson, D-Concord.

“I think it’s past time for cities to come to the table with real solutions for housing,” he said, “rather than continuing to raise roadblocks and trying to kill affordable housing developments.”

BART has worked with developers to build more than 3,800 apartments and town homes at 13 of its stations, nearly 2,000 of which already have been constructed. Several of the projects, such as the one at Oakland’s Fruitvale station, have taken decades to plan and permit.

Assembly Bill 2923 would force cities to rezone BART-owned land in keeping with guidelines set by the transit agency that call for 20,000 new apartments by 2040 — 35 percent of them to be rented below market rate — on its prized real estate. It also would fast-track approvals of certain developments, although the bill now limits that to projects that are no more than one story higher than the tallest buildings allowed in the area surrounding the station.

Carried by Grayson, a former Concord mayor, and fellow Democratic Assemblyman David Chiu, a former San Francisco supervisor, the proposal has won the backing of business, labor and transit groups. But it is opposed by Alameda County and cities such as Fremont, Hayward, Lafayette and Pleasant Hill. The BART board of directors — which officially took a neutral position — is split.

State Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, a frequent critic of BART management, says the proposal is unnecessary, given the development already underway at many stations, and argues that it sets a worrying precedent for land-use powers.

“BART can’t even run the trains efficiently and safely,” Glazer said in an interview this week. “So we’re going to give them more authority and responsibility?”

At the Lafayette BART station this week, riders were unanimous in their support for more housing in the Bay Area, but opinions were mixed on whether the transit agency should also be acting as a planning commission.

Cities should have the ultimate authority over housing development because their leaders know their community the best, said Rika Piercy, who recently moved back to Lafayette from Alaska.

“There are a lot of factors to consider that an organization like BART might not be aware of: parking, traffic, the base infrastructure,” she said.

The latest version of the bill includes several concessions to the opposition, including a required policy on replacement parking ensuring that “auto-oriented stations are still accessible by private automobile.”

Bus service is sparse in communities such as Lafayette and Walnut Creek, even during peak commute times. Stacey Goodwin, an apartment dweller in downtown Lafayette, often parks a few blocks from the station and then walks the rest of the way. She’d happily take a local bus more often, she said, if only it came more than once an hour.

“It’s just not enough. Once every hour?” she said. “That’s just stupid.”

Meanwhile, the bill’s champions and detractors are intensely lobbying the Senate. Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a business association that promotes housing construction and transit improvements, said his team was engaged in “a full-court press” to get it passed.

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New S.F. icon: ‘Grand Central station of the West’ Only about 15 stations in the East Bay and San Francisco would be directly affected, but supporters of the proposal say its benefits would ripple across the region.

“The land around BART stations is some of the important and accessible land in all of California,” said Egon Terplan, regional planning director at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association. “What happens around these stations is critical. We want them to be places of lots of activity, and we want them to be places that leverage the public’s $20 billion investment in this system.”

But Lafayette Mayor Don Tatzin, an opponent of the bill, says his city has never been approached about building housing on its BART station. “I think someday we will,” he said, “and we don’t need this bill to do it.”

What would Assembly Bill 2923 do? It would require BART to develop guidelines similar to those it adopted in 2016 calling for 20,000 homes throughout the system by 2040, with 35 percent offered at below-market-rate — and for certain East Bay and San Francisco cities to update their zoning of BART property accordingly. It also would fast-track developments on BART-owned property as long as the building heights are no more than one story higher than the tallest buildings allowed in the surrounding land. The latest version of the bill also requires a policy on replacement parking to ensure that “auto-oriented stations are still accessible by private automobile.”