The BART board has effectively declared war on suburbia — aided in large part by one of the district’s suburban directors who sold out long-distance commuters.

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Editorial: Electing Allen and Wallace crucial for BART’s solvency At issue is a badly needed garage BART promised 15 years ago for parking at the Dublin/Pleasanton station. The battle has become a proxy for whether BART should build parking or instead try to force suburban commuters to walk, bus or bike to BART.

The reality is that most of the urban core directors don’t want to build parking lots. Last year, the board adopted a station access policy that discourages providing parking. The just-launched construction at the Walnut Creek station might be the last suburban lot built.

To be sure, BART should encourage and enable walking, biking and busing to stations. But there are practical limitations, especially in the East Bay suburbs, which do not enjoy heavily subsidized bus systems like those covering the urban core.

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At the Dublin/Pleasanton station, the lack of BART parking forces commuters onto the freeway. On an average weekday, all 2,927 parking spaces at the station are full by about 7:45 a.m. Meanwhile, 3,500 people are on the waiting list for precious parking permits.

But most of BART’s urban directors and Joel Keller of Brentwood have now teamed up to reject, by a one-vote margin, building the garage, which would add 540 spaces.

Consequently, the district will forsake $20 million of state funding lined up by Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, R-Dublin, that would cover more than half the cost.

BART Director Lateefah Simon of Oakland and suburban directors Debora Allen, John McPartland and Thomas Blalock supported building the garage. But the other five directors in July endorsed a “hybrid” alternative to add the same number of parking slots by re-striping existing lots, using nearby private lots and installing automated car-stacking lifts.

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It’s a charade. The restriping should have been done years ago as a supplement to the garage, not in lieu of it. And the district can’t identify private property owners willing to lease space for parking.

As for the automatic lifts, they have never been used in a similar public transit environment. Given BART’s history with its elevators and escalators, they would likely become a costly maintenance nightmare. And their operation would add a district-estimated four to eight minutes a day of time to commutes and require highly paid BART workers to operate them, at least to start.

But the board majority claims the hybrid model is cheaper than a new garage. That’s because the district’s financial analysis relies on BART’s excessively high construction costs to make the price of building the garage appear greater. It also assumes incorrectly that the $20 million from the state, earmarked specifically for the parking lot, would be used for either option.

The BART board majority has shown that it considers suburbanites second-class riders. The district’s promises of system improvements, for which it convinced voters last year to raise property taxes, are meaningless to those who can’t find a place to park.