BART’s West Oakland Station parking lot gets cut in half

West Oakland BART commuters may have had to circle a little longer for a parking spot Monday, as half the station’s lot was taped off to clear the way for a new housing project.

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BART is removing 240 of its 440 parking spaces at the busy station, the agency said on its website, to make way for 762 residential units, including 240 affordable housing units. As of Monday morning, cones and construction tape are blocking the spots on the of the lot along Chester and Fifth streets.

With the closure, bike parking on the south side of the station has been relocated to the north side, and AC Transit buses are now parking on the Seventh Street side. The latest information can be found on BART’s website.

The lot costs $18 a day on weekdays and was more than 90% full during BART’s spring 2026 parking counts, as it is often used by workers heading into San Francisco. On the weekends, when parking is free, the parking lot serves as a convenient launch point for people visiting San Francisco and elsewhere in the Bay Area by train.

The closest BART stations with a parking lot from West Oakland are at Fruitvale and MacArthur stations. There are also private parking lots near the West Oakland station and some street parking. 

Krystin Debose, a Pittsburg resident who works at Luke’s Lobster in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, told SFGATE she often parks at West Oakland BART so she can keep her car nearby. With fewer parking spaces, she said her commute could become even more unpredictable. 

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“I feel like it’s definitely going to be a stress because even with the parking lot that they had, it was already a lot,” Debose said. “… I usually come a little early so that I can look for a [spot] and sometimes I just sit and wait.”

Similarly, Diana Caballero, who works in the cafeteria at Meta’s San Francisco office, told SFGATE she fears parking will become more of a hassle in the coming months. 

“This is a big problem because I go to downtown,” Caballero said. “… This is a good parking because I have [access] to good public transportation.”

The development plan for the project, called Mandela Station, was first approved by Oakland’s Planning Commission in 2019, according to the city’s website. After this first phase of construction is complete, the building will be a 31-story high-rise building. In addition to the housing units, it will also include 300,000 square feet of office space and approximately 53,000 square feet of retail space, the city’s website shows.