MacArthur station (BART)

MacArthur station is a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station in the Temescal District of Oakland, California. It is the largest station in the BART system, being the only one with four platform tracks. Service through MacArthur is timed for cross-platform transfers between the southbound lines that pass through the station. MacArthur station is located in the median of SR 24 just north of its interchange with I-580. The station is perpendicular to 40th Street and MacArthur Boulevard. The surrounding neighborhood is mostly low-density residential, making MacArthur station primarily a commuting hub.

History
By August 1965, the city of Oakland wanted to call the station "MacArthur", while BART preferred "Oakland North". A BART committee selected "MacArthur" in October 1965, rejecting a proposal for "Temescal". The BART Board approved the name in December 1965.

MacArthur station opened on September 11, 1972, as the northern terminus of the inaugural BART line (now the Orange Line) which ran to. Due to a national strike that year by elevator constructors, elevator construction on the early stations was delayed. Elevators at most of the initial stations, including MacArthur, were completed in the months following the opening. Service was extended north to on January 29, 1973. A second line between MacArthur and (now the Yellow Line) opened on May 21, 1973; it was extended to San Francisco on September 16, 1974, when the Transbay Tube opened. Richmond–Daly City service via MacArthur (now the Red Line) began on April 19, 1976.

The station included several pieces of public art: an abstract mural by Mark Adams over a staircase (which Adams later replaced with two murals after the stairs were removed for an elevator in 2000), and tile mosaics by Adams and Alfonso Pardiñas in the fare lobby. On July 22, 2018, a man stabbed three women at the station, killing one of them. Sunday-only service to the station on the Dublin/Pleasanton line was operated from February 11, 2019 to February 10, 2020.

BART and the City of Oakland began planning in 1993 for transit-oriented development (TOD) to replace the surface parking lot east of the station. Construction of a 450-space BART parking garage at the southern end of the site began in mid-2011; it opened on September 15, 2014. A 90-unit residential building was constructed in 2013–2016, followed by a 385-unit residential complex with 33000 sqft of retail space constructed in 2015–2020. The latter project included a reconstruction of the plaza outside the station: planters were removed, a new concrete surface added, and a 200-space bike station was built. The work took place from June 2018 to August 2019. The final phase of TOD – a 24-story, 403-unit residential tower with 13000 sqft of retail space – was completed in early 2021. , BART does not anticipate development on a smaller agency-owned parcel on the west side of SR 24 until the 2030s.

Station layout
MacArthur station has two island platforms and four tracks, allowing cross-platform interchanges between lines. Outer tracks 1 and 2 serve the and ; Track 1 goes northbound towards, and Track 2 goes southbound towards  and San Francisco. Inner tracks 3 and 4 serve the ; Track 3 goes northbound toward, and Track 4 goes southbound toward San Francisco. Connections between the lines are timed for southbound passengers, while is the transfer point for northbound service. MacArthur tends to be crowded in the morning due to high transfer volume between two lines where only a few people get off while many are trying to board. Southbound trains converge to single track towards downtown Oakland; San Francisco-bound trains depart before Berryessa-bound trains.

Bus connections
MacArthur station is served by several AC Transit routes: local route 57 on 40th Street, local route 18 on Martin Luther King Jr. Way to the west, and local route 6 and All-nighter route 800 on Telegraph Avenue to the east. Several shuttle routes stop on Walter Miles Way on the east side of the station entrance. These include Early Bird Express route 705, Emery-Go-Round buses serving Emeryville, the Caltrans Bay Bridge Bike Shuttle, three Kaiser Shuttle routes, and four Alta Bates shuttle routes.