How one BART station supports a city’s ecosystem of businesses, residents, and tourists

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 1 - 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/City 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/City 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.