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View an interactive map of some of the businesses, places, and people that contribute to the neighborhood's economic and cultural vibrancy

How do you measure BART's impact on the Bay Area?

You might look at the numbers. In fiscal year 2024, for example, BART contributed an estimated $2.7 billion* in economic activity to the five counties it serves. Another metric: Riders traveled over 750 million miles that same year – that's nearly a billion miles traveled on our tracks! 

But other impacts go beyond stats and figures: BART makes people’s lives easier, BART reduces traffic, BART helps the environment. Numbers don't tell the whole story.

So, where to begin? Let's start small. 

To understand BART’s impact, we will start by looking at a single station – Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre. From this zoomed-in vantage point, we can illustrate how just one station transforms and sustains not just a neighborhood, but a broad community of residents, workers, businesses, travelers, and families. 

Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre Station sits at the convergence of Highway 680, the Iron Horse pedestrian and bicycle trail, multiple hotels and office buildings, and a vibrant mixed-use transit village with restaurants, gyms, bars, a dance school, 600-plus apartment complex, the list goes on . The station is the beating heart that enables these resources to exist and prosper.  BART stations are not simply destinations -- stops on a line to get you here and there. 

BART stations create destinations. 

We connected with local homeowners, small business owners, a commuter, a major hotel chain, restaurants, neighborhood hangouts, and an apartment complex to understand firsthand why BART is essential to their bottom lines and the well-being of their community. 

Hear what they had to say in the interactive map below or view the map in a new tab by clicking here. 
 

By looking at this single station – one of fifty – we begin to understand why public transportation is so crucial to the Bay Area. The impact of one station is immense; imagine the impact of all of BART’s 50 stations taken together! Public transportation facilitates economic growth and livable communities, and that equates to a booming region that will grow and flourish for generations to come. 

“Locating by a BART station is a great move for businesses,” said BART Director Matt Rinn, whose district includes Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre Station. “You have in-built customers, who are coming and going from the station, you can increase capacity by not needing a parking lot, and your employees can get to work affordably.” 

Rinn knows business. He opened his insurance agency in Pleasant Hill and was named the city's Businessperson of the Year in 2011. He learned the role transit plays in sustaining and building communities when he was elected to the Pleasant Hill City Council and became a board member on the Pleasant Hill Chamber of Commerce, for which he later served as Chairman of the Board.

“These experiences helped me understand and appreciate how vital transit is to our communities. It builds a vibe. BART has helped attract a demographic that wouldn’t necessarily settle in the suburbs – young families, people who work in tech – who can experience all the amenities of a suburban environment, including more housing options, but can easily commute into major urban centers for work.”

- BART Director Matt Rinn

*Calculated with the APTA Economic Impact Tool

The New Brewery in Town
 

“BART and breweries go hand in hand. Promoting ‘Ride BART to Headlands Brewing’ is a key part of our marketing strategy."

- Austin Sharp, CEO Headlands Brewing

The new kid on the block in the Contra Costa Centre Transit Village is Headlands Brewing, the third East Bay outpost of the craft beer brewery.

The family-friendly beer garden, set amongst tall redwoods with fire pits and a kids’ play area, opened in March 2025. For the grand opening, Headlands offered $1 off your first pint when you showed your Clipper card. 

“Proximity to BART was key” in choosing the location, CEO Austin Sharp said. “It’s by far the easiest way to get to our location.” 

Transit accessibility isn’t important just for Sharp’s customers, but his employees too. Headlands recently launched commuter benefits for its employees. All of Headlands’ locations are BARTable, including its main brewery in Pittsburg (it’s closed to the public). 

The Cycling Family

“We moved to our neighborhood because it’s close to Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre Station. One hundred percent. I wanted to live by BART to open up job opportunities so I wouldn’t have to drive."

- Kristin Tennessen, Walnut Creek Resident

“A community is built by interacting in a positive way,” said Kristin Tennessen, whose family of five lives a short bike ride from Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre Station. “Bicycling on the trail system here has made facilitating those connections easy.”

To get to work each morning, Tennessen and her husband ride their bikes along the Contra Costa Canal Trail to the station – it takes about eight minutes – lock their bikes up, and ride BART to their offices. They also regularly ride their bikes to BART with their kids, ages six, nine, and eleven, to take them on various adventures, like the Oakland Museum of California and the Exploratorium.

“People in their cars can’t stop and talk to each other like you can on a bike,” Tennessen said. “I run into people on the trail while I’m heading to BART, and we stop and chat. It facilitates interaction with your community.”

The Restaurant
 

“People live here because BART is here, and that brings us business. We complement each other."

- Giorgio Palacios, General Manager of Parada

Ten years ago, Peruvian restaurant Parada opened on the corner of Treat Boulevard and Sunne Lane. One of the main reasons for selecting the sunny corner spot: its proximity to BART.

“It’s very common for customers to take BART here from Antioch, from Concord, from Oakland,” said Giorgio Palacios, Parada General Manager. “Employees take BART, too, especially the younger people who don’t want to worry about their parents picking them up at the end of their shift.”

Parada is known for its succulent pisco sours, “and because we serve alcohol, we want to make sure our customers are safe and can get home without getting in trouble.”

The restaurant group, Altamirano, owns two other BARTable restaurants: Sanguchon Eatery in San Francisco’s Mission District and Barranco in Downtown Lafayette.

The Hotel

"One of the key benefits of staying with Embassy Suites Walnut Creek is its location across the street from a BART station. Guests rave about it. They love that they can skip the hassle of renting a car and just take BART."

- David Burri, Director of Sales and Marketing, Embassy Suites – Walnut Creek

It’s not uncommon for travelers to discover Embassy Suites in Walnut Creek by googling, “hotels near BART,” said David Burri, Director of Sales and Marketing, Embassy Suites – Walnut Creek.

“Our location is just a four-minute walk to BART. It's a huge selling point for groups, conventions, and individual travelers, especially because it’s an easy trip from the San Francisco and Oakland airports,” he continued. “That’s one of the first things we discuss with people interested in hosting conferences and events at the hotel – BART is right here, and it makes it simple to travel back and forth to San Francisco, Oakland, and local attractions.”

Burri said he has posters in the hotel lobby that promote using BART, and it’s one of the first conveniences mentioned on the hotel’s website and promotional material.

“Our Guest Services team gets a lot of questions about how to travel to local attractions: What’s the fastest way to the Moscone Convention Center? How do I get to Fishermen’s Wharf?” Burri said. “We always encourage them to skip the traffic and take BART.”

The Commuter
 

"Taking BART versus driving gets me to my office so much faster. If I’m driving during commute hours, four to five miles can take up to 45 minutes. It takes a long time to even get to the highway."

- Michael Blasky, daily commuter

Every weekday, Michael Blasky takes BART from his home in Concord to his office in the Contra Costa Centre Transit Village.

“BART gets me to my office so much faster than driving,” said Blasky, who works for the Contra Costa County Transportation Authority. “The road infrastructure is pushed to the max for commuters here. If you’re taking the local highways or the thorough streets through Contra Costa County, you’re going to be backed up in traffic.”

Blasky said his commute is also “essentially free” because the Contra Costa Centre Transit Village offers significant commuter benefits, like $80 on a Clipper card for $5.

“My wife and I were considering buying an electric car when I got this job, but because of the commuter benefits program, it made absolutely no financial sense," Blasky said.

The Neighborhood Hangouts

"BART is a convenient way for people not to drink and drive. When customers take BART, they can fully enjoy what we have to offer."

- Baldeep Sangha, co-owner of Hops & Scotch and Bill & Bali's

Baldeep and Gurpreet Sangha own two businesses by the station – the bar Hops & Scotch and the pizza-and-pints place Bill & Bali's. They're just around the corner from each other. 

“The BART station and the location itself were the biggest draws for us,” he said. “And then all the Avalon residents upstairs. There’s in-built community here.”

After work, people will walk over from BART to grab a quick drink with friends at Hops & Scotch or pick up their kids for some fresh slices at Bill & Bali's. It's a nice alternative to having to schlep into downtown, Sangha said.

“There’s a lot of foot traffic here, so we get a good deal of exposure,” he concluded. “If the BART station disappeared for whatever reason, that would significantly hurt our pocketbook.”

The Apartment Complex
 

"I had a blast living at Avalon Walnut Creek. It’s located right next to Pleasant Hill [Contra Costa Centre] Station, which makes the commute into the city as convenient as it can be on BART."

- Piotr G., former Avalon resident (via Yelp)

Avalon Walnut Creek is a shining example of transit-oriented development, a form of urban development that concentrates high-density, mixed-use development by public transit stations.  

The community features over 600 apartment homes, including affordable housing, just steps from the BART station.

“The people who live here value accessibility to public transit and walkability,” said Katrina Gaasterland, Community Manager at AvalonBay Communities. "We get a lot of feedback from prospective residents that BART is one of the highlights for leasing in our community. They use it to get to work and entertainment, and it cuts down on costs associated with owning a vehicle. Plus, it’s just easy!”  

BART is moving forward with changes to its financial operations to improve efficiency and transparency with the creation of a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) reporting to the General Manager. 

This new financial structure brings together the functions from the Office of the Controller-Treasurer, who has traditionally reported to the BART Board of Directors, and the Performance & Budget Office, who reports to the General Manager, into one group, reporting to a new CFO position. 

The CFO will have the authority to implement strategic business changes to streamline BART’s financial forecasting, budgeting, and reporting of financial data. The new structure will create greater accountability under the General Manager to realize long-term cost savings. Creating a CFO position requires state legislation to amend the BART Act.

“This is a significant reform to show we are committed to using our limited financial resources in the most efficient manner possible,” said BART Board President Janice Li. “A new CFO will help drive a culture of financial discipline as we navigate economic uncertainty.”

Last year, the Board of Directors, at the recommendation of the Office of the Inspector General, approved modifying BART’s organizational structure in an effort to focus on improving efficiency and financial operations. 

“This is a tremendous step for BART and reflects how well the OIG recommendation for a CFO structure was embraced,” said Claudette Biemeret, BART’s Inspector General. “I applaud the BART Board and Executive Leadership for taking on this change. CFO leadership is crucial to transparency and accountability in the use of public funds.”

In response, BART’s General Manager hired a consulting team to develop a roadmap for implementing the financial organization structure. The BART Board of Directors approved the new structure at its December 7 meeting and BART will move quickly to identify and onboard a new CFO role.

View the presentation.

Last week, Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed July as Disability Pride Month. The month marks the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that was signed into law on July 26, 1990. The ADA was a major milestone for civil rights in the U.S. that "prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, removing barriers to employment, transportation, public services and other critical areas," per Newsom's proclamation.

More than 7% of BART riders have a disability, and BART is continuously working to make the system as easy to use as possible for every single person who rides and relies on us. Our work is ongoing. 

This month, BART will be celebrating riders with disabilities and the contributions they have made to our transportation system and region. 

We begin with the story of Harold Willson, originally published in 2022. 

Harold Willson (left) smiles at Eric Staley (right) on a BART train in 1972. Photo courtesy of Kaiser Permanente Heritage Resources.

“There is a special personal pride in being the first handicapped person in a wheelchair to use a subway train, and to represent all handicapped travelers who will use the BART system in years to come. I’ll never forget that sense of freedom I experienced as I boarded the BART train.”

– Harold Willson, quoted in “Accent on Living,” Spring 1973

When Harold Willson was 21 years old, his life forever changed.

The West Virginia native dropped out of university when his funds ran out and started working as a coal miner. On a regular day in February 1948, about two years after he began working in the mines, Willson was caught in a slate fall. He suffered severe spinal damage, broken ribs, and a broken back.

Willson’s tragic accident spurred a lifetime of advocacy. His work to raise awareness and secure rights and access continues to impact the freedom and mobility of transit riders across the nation. Thanks to Willson’s efforts in the 1960s, BART became the first public transit system in the nation with accessible trains and stations.

“Never again would skeptics be able to argue that trains could not be made wheelchair accessible" after Willson, write Doriz Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames in “The Disability Rights Movement." 

Four months after his accident, Willson was transferred by train to the Kaiser Foundation Rehabilitation Center in Vallejo. It was a felicitous move, one that would forever alter the course of his life and public transportation. In his two years at the facility, Willson underwent intensive physical therapy and multiple surgeries. Doctors told the young man he would use a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

In 1950, Willson joined Bank of America and married Patricia Leister, who was a member of the nursing staff that treated him at Kaiser. Six years later, he completed a degree in business administration at Golden Gate College, and a year after that, he was hired as an accountant at the Kaiser Foundation Medical Care Program. Willson would go on to hold a variety of positions at Kaiser throughout his life. He’d retire as a senior financial analyst for the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan in 1977.

Said Cuong Le, historian for the nonprofit health care provider: "Kaiser Permanente is fortunate to have passionate and influential employees like Harold Willson, whose remarkable success advocating for historically overlooked needs of people with disabilities led to substantially improved conditions."

During the years that Willson lived in the Bay Area, the region was aflutter with the news of a soon-to-be-constructed rapid transit system that would connect the Bay. The tenor of excitement shifted for Willson when he learned the system, to be called the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, or BART for short, would not be accessible for people with disabilities. Four percent of the Bay Area population at the time had severely limited mobility, meaning the BART system would exclude them from its ridership.

“When the system was built in the 60s, the elevators weren’t a consideration,” said Bob Franklin, BART’s Director of Customer Access and Accessibility. “They were completely an afterthought.”

Photo courtesy of Kaiser Permanente Heritage Resources.

Willson reached out to BART and offered his services as a “volunteer consultant” to the BART Board starting in 1964. He had a unique and compassionate approach to advocacy, according to the people who knew and worked with him. 

“His suggestion was novel for rapid transit, no one had tried it,” A.E. Wolf, the General Superintendent of Transportation for BART, is quoted as saying in the Spring 1973 issue of “Accent on Living." “It posed all kinds of problems; cost was significant. Our staff, including myself, was hardly enthusiastic.”

“But, he did not threaten, nor picket, nor sulk, nor lose patience,” Wolf continued. “Instead, he was professional, pleasant, firm and persistent. As a result, he won the support of each of our board members while maintaining a friendly relationship with our staff.”

Willson’s approach was to “sell” the idea for an accessible BART system by contacting people one by one and having individual conversations with them, slowly winning them over to his cause.

“You could be a pioneer in being the first major public transportation system to be accessible to the handicapped,” Willson told the BART Board and staff in 1963, according to Michael Healy’s “BART: The Dramatic History of the Bay Area Rapid Transit System.”

Willson’s methods worked. In 1968, the BART Board requested $7 million from the California legislature to include accessible elevators in its plans (the figure was later revised to $10 million). 

Willson’s advocacy did not stop there. He and representatives from BART continued to lobby Sacramento until $150 million in additional funding for wheelchair accessibility was allocated to the under-construction system in March 1969. BART, with Willson's guidance and persistence, was ahead of its time. It would be more than two decades later that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law.

Among the accommodations the funding secured were elevators at every station, telephones in elevators and stations that were accessible for wheelchair users, special service gates and handrails, Braille symbols on elevator door casings, loudspeaker directions for those who are low vision and blind, closed-circuit televisions as needed, and level boarding between the platform and train. 

In the years since Willson’s advocacy, BART has added even more accessible features to the system, which you can read about on bart.gov/guide/accessibility.

After BART was built, Willson would go on to continue advocating for accessibility. In 1971, Willson and Wilmot R. McCutchen, Chief of Design for BART, testified before a special U.S. Senate Committee on Aging. Their testimony was “an important precursor to raising public consciousness of the issue of disabled access,” writes Healy in his "BART" book. A robust disability rights and independent living movement would emerge in the years that followed Willson's lobbying.

 Image courtesy of Kaiser Permanente Heritage Resources.

Willson died in the Bay Area in 1994. 

His legacy continues to reverberate across the nation. After BART, the newly built transit systems WMATA and MARTA also made their systems accessible, setting a new precedent for future generations of public transit.

“All of this is possible because one man had a bright shiny dream, and he made it come true,” Wolf is quoted as saying in a 2008 journal. 

Denise Figueroa, the Executive Director of the Independent Living Center of the Hudson Valley and a longtime transit advocate, noted that transit has “come a very long way in terms of accessibility” from the 1950s and 1960s.

“In those days, when Willson first started out, there wasn’t an expectation of accessibility,” she said by phone. “Over the years, what has changed is that the public expects transit to be accessible – even non-disabled people.”

Figueroa said the mentality of transit systems was often, “It’s not my problem.” She said agencies would routinely cite cost as the prohibiting factor.

“The argument was always: It’s too expensive,” she said. That changed with the passage of ADA (1990), as well as Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (1973), which requires public entities that receive federal funding to ensure that people with disabilities are not discriminated against, nor denied goods or services.

Today, BART continues to bolster its efforts to make the system accessible for all riders. The transit agency hosts a monthly BART Accessibility Task Force on the fourth Thursday of each month, where the public can voice concerns, ask questions, and provide input. BART, which is ADA accessible by law, also encourages passengers to make a Reasonable Modification Request if their needs are not being met. 

When transit systems are accessible for all, said Franklin in closing, everybody wins.

“It’s a federal law now that we’re accessible to everyone,” he said. “And when we design it that way, everyone benefits. The more universally we can design something, the better it will be.”

The BART Accessibility Task Force (BATF) is actively recruiting new members. If you are interested or have questions, please contact, Elena Van Loo, Customer Access and Accessibility Department, by phone at (510) 874-7366 or by e-mail at [email protected].