The Bay Area's two main transit systems, Muni and BART, have been graded by a new report studying transportation – and both ranked surprisingly high.
The report prepared for public policy nonprofit Next 10 by the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at the UC Berkeley School of Law, gave BART an overall B- grade, while Muni got a solid B.
The best stations for BART? Montgomery Street, Civic Center/UN and 24th Street Mission. The worst for BART? SFO Airport, South San Francisco and North Concord/Martinez.
Muni's best stations were Market Street and Church Street, Market Street and 7th Street, and Market Street and New Montgomery Street. Its worst were Third Street and Marin, and 46th Avenue and Vicente Street.
Muni's best stations did so well because of a near-perfect walkability score, a high rate of transit use and zero-vehicle households in a half-mile radius around the station. You can see BART's scorecard below.
The grades weren't based on standard ridership metrics like punctuality or cleanliness.
Instead, the report studied and graded the neighborhoods within a 1/2-mile radius of 489 existing stations in six distinct California rail transit systems, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, Santa Clara, San Francisco (Muni) and wider San Francisco Bay Area (BART). Those lines currently serve more than 60 percent of the state’s population.
The overall grades were calculated based on how well each station's area encourages residents and employees to ride transit, connect to amenities, and create "vibrant, equitable and thriving" locales. The report's authors said 1/2-mile radius generally represents the outer limit of convenient walking distance to the station.
Under those criteria, BART and Muni did well, said the report's authors, who stressed that how effective a station is at anchoring a neighborhood can play heavily into how much funding it gets for maintenance and expansion.