BART plans major housing at East Bay station. The trade-off: 400 parking spots lost

At BART's West Oakland Station, a planned housing development comes with a polarizing trade-off: Nearly 400 parking spaces must go.

Signs posted around the station lot warn patrons of a transformation underfoot. The first phase comprises 240 affordable apartments, stacked over asphalt that currently bears white, rectangular markings for all the cars that swarm in daily from Alameda, Emeryville, the Oakland hills or the deep flatlands.

It's the urbanists' dream and the suburban motorists' nightmare, when housing for cars becomes housing for people.

"When I first heard about it, I thought, ‘Oh, no way,'" said Michelle Fogner, who lives miles away from BART, in the Oakland hills, and drives to West Oakland for convenient transit.

She and other East Bay residents have relied on the same hack for decades. Park at West Oakland BART, catch a train to downtown San Francisco and skip the Bay Bridge traffic. If all goes well, a person can zoom through the Transbay Tube and arrive at the Financial District in less than 10 minutes.

But the new affordable housing project is about to upend that tried and true commuting routine. Beginning May 4, BART will convert 86 reserved spaces (the ones people book ahead of time on a daily or monthly basis) into daily, first-come, first-served spots.

The bigger disruption comes in July when BART officials expect to remove 300 of the 439 parking spaces. Two years from now, the developers aim to launch their second phase. Most of the remaining BART parking stalls will disappear, leaving just 42 in the Chester Street lot. (That phase is still unfunded, and BART has no projected timeline for it to begin.)

For commuters who regularly park at West Oakland Station, the change could be vexing.

"This will definitely make it more inconvenient to get to San Francisco," said Jeff Ma of Berkeley as he exited West Oakland Station and walked to his car Thursday morning.

Nearby, Fogner had snagged one of the last available spots, steps from the station concourse, beneath the shade of the elevated track.

Fogner is already scouring for alternate places to park, and finding that none are optimal. She knows gas station owners who would rent out space for perhaps $15 a day, which is slightly more than BART's drop-in fee of $13.90 ($16.20 to reserve a spot in advance). If demand increases as commuters are displaced from the BART lot, owners of private lots - or businesses with surplus parking - might try to profit, Fogner surmised.

"People will just start charging whatever," she said, dreading the loss of an "easy, regulated, governmental" facility.

Others worry that motorists who lose spots at West Oakland Station would pour into the surrounding neighborhood, occupying curb space that should be for residents. Some motorists admitted they already do that to avoid the $13.90 fee. The blocks that surround the station have two-hour spaces, though residents with permits can park there all day.

At least one BART rider welcomed the housing project, and said it was worth sacrificing acres of valuable car storage.

"I'm someone who has lived in affordable housing for most of my life, so I know we need more of it," said Brenden Murphy. He lives in San Francisco's Mission District and rides BART each day to his cabinetry business in West Oakland. Though Murphy also drives a van, he typically parks it at the shop and walks to the station.

Many West Oakland residents share Murphy's sentiments, believing the new "Mandela Station" apartments will catalyze economic growth in their community, said Kasheica McKinney, director of transit-oriented development at BART.

"This is one of the (transit oriented developments) where the level of support has been highly consistent," McKinney said. She recalled countless stakeholder meetings in which dozens of residents showed up to meet the developers, Alan Dones of SUDA LLC and MacFarlane Partners.

Renderings of the Mandela Station show tall, gridded buildings with courtyards and rows of trees on the sidewalks, a sharp contrast to West Oakland Station's historical role as a park-and-ride for people driving in from the suburbs. BART officials realized the strategic location and desirability of the West Oakland lot about 25 years ago. In 2001, they made it the first pay-to-park lot in the rail system, charging $100 a month to reserve a spot. Within four years, the lot was filling up each morning by 5:45 a.m., so BART implemented a $5 daily fee.

Even as the fee escalated, commuters remained undeterred. BART's customer surveys suggest that many people travel far out of their way to park at West Oakland and get a 10-minute connection to San Francisco, McKinney said.

"People actually pass up a lot of other stations and come to West Oakland for the easy access," she explained. "So our hope is that they will go to a station that's closer to home, which is likely to have more parking available."

Fogner admitted she's among the people willing to drive farther to get close to the Transbay Tube. When West Oakland eliminates parking, she may revert to Rockridge Station. That North Oakland hub has rectangular swaths of pavement flanking both sides of College Avenue. The ride to San Francisco is considerably longer, at 25 minutes, with a potential 10-minute wait for the train. But it's a stable option, since BART's real estate division is not eyeing the Rockridge lot for development. Yet.

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This story was originally published April 17, 2026 at 7:08 PM.