Getting people to visit your town via BART isn’t easy. It’s not a “build it and they will come” kind of situation.
But one East Bay town is doing a fantastic job encouraging transit-powered visits.
Here’s a video that I made sharing more about it:
The town is Orinda. If you’ve ever visited Orinda via BART, you know that the BART station is almost literally downtown.
But “almost” doesn’t cut it if there’s no easy way to walk from the BART station to the kinds of shops and restaurants that people actually want to visit.
And in this case, Orinda has done a fantastic job. From the station itself, there’s an easy pedestrian bridge leading right to downtown.
Clear signs direct visitors, showing the how they can either go to the “Theatre District” or “Village District” and lay out exactly what they can expect to find in each one.
After heading towards the Theatre District, you’re about 20 steps from an easy side entrance into Theatre Square.
There, you’ll find the iconic Orinda Theatre. But you’re also find new places like Shemroon Cafe (more on that soon–join the 925 News newsletter so we can share our review!)
And across the street, there’s the classic Casa Orinda (with amazing fried chicken).
The BART access is so good that if I were hanging out in downtown Lafayette, I’d consider taking BART one stop to visit Theatre Square.
I recently stopped briefly in Orinda on the way to the city on BART, and I could hop off the train, grab a coffee, and be back on the next train to downtown in about 10 minutes.
Orinda is showing what it really means to be “BART Served”. Kudos to the town on making transit truly work.
