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Comment by ZanyProgrammer | Hacker News Reader

There are houses that are less than a half mile from the platform, yet no one in their right mind would walk that. http://imgur.com/a/TUi8r

EDIT: I mean walk around under the Grimmer underpass, not dart across the freeway obviously.

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That complete lack of walkability is some serious riff-raff proofing they're doing there. Can't have anyone without a car just wandering into a nearby pleasant little suburban cul-de-sac now can we? You see, lack of walkability is basically a strategy for keeping poor people out of nice areas. San Francisco is the exception to this rule because of the hills. Poor people don't like to walk up hills to go to the liquor store ergo nice houses can be near poor neighborhoods as long as they are sufficiently up hill.

That certainly make sense. I had a similar idea about the reason behind it: The local residents don't want people parking in their neighborhood. Every BART station I've been to gets filled to max capacity during commute hours. On top of that, the hours are limited so overnight is impossible, but that could be done in a residential area. Businesses around the stations have to put up signs saying no BART parking allowed (how is this enforced?). The people that live nearby wouldn't want people parking for weeks for free on the streets outside their homes. I know this is illegal and they could be towed, but I wouldn't doubt this is involved in the planning.

Here is how residential parking works in such cases: posted limits like 2 or 3 hours parking, local residents get stickers to their cars exempting them from limit. That's all.

In London, they simply restrict parking to residents from, say, 10-11am in one area, and 11-12 in the next area.

One parking warden can cover a large area, residents get a permit, visitors only need to pay for one hour of parking.

All that undeveloped land around the BART station will be high density housing btw. The work has already started.

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