Five days a week, Emily Yarrington takes a very short walk from her apartment at the Avalon complex in Dublin to the BART station next door, boards a train, and rides an hour to class at UC Law in San Francisco.

She’s orchestrated her life around Bay Area transit for more than a decade. When she returned to the region in 2015, fresh off earning a master’s degree in international relations and law at the University of Edinburgh, she didn’t have a driver’s license and chose the Bay Area for its robust public transit network.

She first lived in San Jose, relying on Caltrain to commute into Palo Alto. Two years ago, she became a mother. Last August, she left a job in tech to start law school. With her family of three solely living off her husband’s salary, the budget tightened. They traded the Peninsula for an East Bay home next to the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station, where rent and childcare were far cheaper than they would be closer to San Francisco. It struck a good balance — she could still access the city for school and enjoy a lower cost of living.

“The fact we knew that building was within a three-minute walk of BART was a huge selling point,” Yarrington said.

But, as BART warns of potential service cuts in January and closing 15 stations as soon as next July, hers potentially among them, she stands to give up more than convenience — it means losing the whole premise of the life she’s built. 

There are many in Yarrington’s shoes. The Standard spoke with residents of four so-called “transit-oriented developments (opens in new tab)” built next to stations which BART could close. These complexes are based on the theory of building high-density housing near transit corridors for associated economic, environmental and social benefits. Mainly apartments, and often with ground-floor retail, the projects are designed to give the semblance of city living in areas that have traditionally been low-rise and car-reliant. 

More than a few residents said they dread driving — one told The Standard she’d sooner switch jobs than have to get behind the wheel regularly — and decided to move to a city they wouldn’t otherwise live in specifically to be near a BART stop.

BART too predicated a major portion of its growth strategy to selling and developing the land around its stations to drive both revenue and passenger traffic. But that was then. 

Starting in July, the agency will face an operating deficit of over $350 million as federal pandemic aid runs out and ridership remains well below pre-pandemic levels. If voters reject the Connect Bay Area sales tax measure on the November 2026 ballot — a half-cent increase in four counties and a penny in San Francisco — BART has said it would close 15 stations by July 2027, raise fares by 30%, and lay off 1,200 workers. 

BART’s latest “alternative service plan” doesn’t name which stations they’d shutter, but agency staff previously presented the board with a list (opens in new tab) based on each station’s ridership and their placement along lines they’d eliminate. Grimly, the cuts may still not be enough to head off what some have termed a “death spiral” that may lead to the end of the line for the entire system.

California has spent the past decade pushing developers to build housing next to BART, betting that residents would trade cars for trains. The state streamlines environmental review for projects near major transit stops and bars cities from requiring parking for projects within a half-mile of stations. 

There is no single legal definition of a TOD, but experts say a project fits the bill if its high-density housing built within walking distance of a major transit stop and designed with transit access in mind. TODs have long been envisioned as a solution (opens in new tab) to traffic and pollution by limiting residents’ reliance on private vehicles.

BART has taken a direct role in developing TODs, partnering with developers to build housing on land it owns and requiring those projects to hit minimum density thresholds and include affordable units. Developers in turn market the buildings to prospective renters with transit access as a featured amenity, often listing it explicitly on their websites (opens in new tab).

A 2018 law (opens in new tab) goes further, forcing cities to approve multifamily developments on BART property that meet zoning, affordability, and labor requirements.

BART lists (opens in new tab)15 completed TODs (opens in new tab) accounting for some 4,200 homes near its stations, along with (opens in new tab)five more (opens in new tab) planned or under construction.

Yarrington said lots of residents in her complex moved specifically for BART access, and that losing the station would affect many of her neighbors, not just because of losing the train, but worse traffic for those who resort to driving too.

“You’re cutting yourself off from the world if you’re not going to have a good transit system,” Yarrington said. “I think it would be very heartbreaking for the community to lose this amenity.”

Melissa Lopez works in a government agency as a transportation engineer. Ironically, the loss of public transportation is what could uproot her from her home. 

For the last year, she’s lived with her boyfriend in the Verano Condominiums, a townhouse complex located a five-minute walk from the South San Francisco BART station. They picked that complex because of its proximity to BART, which she takes to work at her employer’s offices in Oakland. She declined to name her employer for fear of retaliation.

With the state’s looming return-to-work (opens in new tab)order (opens in new tab), which would require her to come into the office four days a week instead of two starting in July, Lopez said she’s likely to become even more reliant on BART at the worst possible time. 

She’s worried about her car getting broken into if she drives to Oakland, so if her station closes, she would transfer to another office, potentially in San Mateo or Richmond, and be forced to drive. If she’s relocated to Richmond, she’d have to move closer to work, due to the distance of driving from her current home.

“It’s just really a shocker, because I feel like California needs better public transportation in general,” she said. “It just wouldn’t be ideal.”

For Tanner Firlotte, a building engineer at the San Francisco International Airport, driving to work is a uniquely dangerous proposition.

He commutes on BART nearly every day and usually only drives to the airport when called for plumbing emergencies outside of the system’s service hours. But even though he rarely drives to work, he’s had two crashes in the past two years, one of which totaled his Kia Soul as he was merging with Highway 101 coming out of the airport. He prefers BART over driving so much that he moved from SoMa to a one-bedroom in Colma’s La Terrazza Apartments for better access to trains.

“It would really suck to move and then immediately have them close the station,” he said. “I literally moved here a year ago just so I could get this BART ride.”

BART, he said, has gotten colleagues living as far away as Antioch out of cars and onto the train, cutting their commute time in half and lowering their traffic-induced blood pressure.

Firlotte, who survived a severe 2011 crash in Washington state that left him in a coma for “a tight few weeks,” said he fears the potential BART station closures and fare hikes are “a move in the wrong direction.” Riders losing their stations wouldn’t be the only ones pushed back behind the wheel, he worries: If fares rise by 30% as BART has warned, commuters who still have a nearby station could also start driving if it’s cheaper than the train.

“If you can get eight people off the road, that’s eight people off the bridge,” he said. “Why would we not do that?”

Nathan Arza moved to a condo at Metro Crossing by the Warm Springs BART station four years ago so he could easily take the train into San Francisco, where he works for DoorDash as a software engineer at their office on 2nd Street. 

If BART were to shut down, Arza says he’d drive to work. Thanks to the surging price of gas, the $8 bridge toll, and the $50 cost of parking for a day in downtown San Francisco, he expects driving will be far more costly than BART — about $140 to commute to and from work twice a week, instead of $35 on BART. 

Even if he wanted to take Caltrain to work instead of BART, it would be a struggle. It’s a 20-minute drive from his building to the San Jose Diridon station, and he’s concerned he‘ll end up waiting a long time for a train to San Francisco, since the system runs less frequently than BART.

“It would be really difficult for my commute,” he said.

What Firlotte has lived through is what Yarrington fears. Losing BART would force her behind the wheel — trading the two hours of study time the train gives her for the risks of the road: crashes and break-ins. Even the nearest station that would stay open, Bay Fair, is a 20-minute drive she’d rather not make.

Beyond residents living next to BART, riders from all walks of life say their commutes and careers would be upended if the agency slashes service and closes stations. Worse, the agency has projected that should the trains stop running altogether, car traffic could increase (opens in new tab) by 73% on the Bay Bridge and 22% in the Caldecott Tunnel during morning peak commute hours, with drivers spending an additional 19 hours behind the wheel, on average.  

“You see accidents every day on the highway,” she said. “You’re not going to end up hurt riding on BART.”