Join us Friday, April 12, 2024, at 5:30 pm in Bauer Wurster Auditorium to reflect on UC Berkeley’s contributions to the planning and implementation of BART, alongside a panel of distinguished practitioners and academics.
5:30-7:00 Panel
Moderator:
Rebecca Saltzman
BART Board Director (District 3)
Panelists:
Robert Cervero
City and Regional Planning Professor Emeritus
Joan Walker
Civil and Environmental Engineering Department Chair, Professor
John King
San Francisco Chronicle Urban Design Critic
Val Menotti
BART Chief Planning & Development Officer
7:00-8:00 Reception
In conjunction with UC Berkeley’s Environmental Design Archives Exhibit: Along the Line: Design and Planning of BART, 1965-1975
Roundtable Discussion: From There to Here: 50 years of BART and UC Berkeley
Friday April 12, 2025; 5:30 - 7 pm, Reception following
Bauer Wurster Auditorium (112 Bauer Wurster Hall)
Moderator:
Rebecca Saltzman, BART Board Director (District 3)
Rebecca Saltzman is the BART Director representing District 3, which includes parts of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, and she has served twice as BART Board President. Saltzman is a Director on and former Chair of the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority and serves on the Alameda Transportation Commission. Outside of her BART service, Rebecca has spent the past two decades as a policy advocate, coalition builder, grassroots organizer, and manager with local, state, and national issue-based organizations.
Panelists:
Robert Cervero, DCRP Professor Emeritus
Robert Cervero has long focused on sustainable transportation policy and planning. He has consulted on numerous transportation and urban planning projects worldwide, most recently advising long-range planning in Dubai and Singapore. His most recent book, Beyond Mobility, won the 2019 National Urban Design Best Book Award. Dr. Cervero was a member of Berkeley’s city and regional planning faculty from 1980 to 2016, where he twice served as Department Chair, held the Carmel P. Friesen Chair in Urban Studies, and directed both the University of California Transportation Center and the Institute of Urban and Regional Development. More recently he has held visiting faculty appointments at Tongji University in Shanghai and NYU-Abu Dhabi.
John King, SF Chronicle Urban Design Critic
John King is the San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic, a post that has allowed him to write on such topics as transit villages and, last year, the impact of BART on the Bay Area’s development patterns since the 1960s. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and honorary member of the American Society of Landscape Architects, his book “Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities,” was published in 2023 by W.W. Norton. He grew up a short bicycle ride from the Pleasant Hill BART station and lives within walking distance of the North Berkeley BART station.
Val Menotti, BART Chief Planning & Development Officer
Val Joseph Menotti is Chief Planning & Development Officer at BART, and oversees station area planning, strategic planning, transit-oriented development, real estate and sustainability. He has been with BART for over 20 years. Val has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford, and a Masters of City & Regional Planning from UC Berkeley. As a graduate student at Berkeley, he worked on several UCTC studies related to transit and land use.
Joan Walker, CEE Department chair/professor
Joan Walker is Department Chair and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. Walker’s research focuses on behavioral modeling, with expertise in discrete choice analysis and travel behavior. She works to improve the models that are used for transportation planning, policy, and operations. Walker has served as the Chair of the Committee on Transportation Demand Forecasting (ADB40) for the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Vice Chair of DEIB for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Co-Director of the Center for Global Metropolitan Studies, and as Acting Director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies. She co-founded the nonprofit Zephyr Foundation working to advance travel analysis to improve society.