Source: The Oakland Tribune

OAKLAND — Through much of Thursday’s BART board meeting, people stared at the bottle of red wine perched in front of BART board member Gail Murray, wondering if she had a problem with alcohol.

Turns out she did, as did several other board members, who objected to the mass transit system allowing alcohol advertising on BART cars.

But their objections did not win over fellow board members, who approved an exception to their alcohol advertising ban. The exception allows up to 17 percent of advertising in BART cars and stations to hawk alcoholic beverages.

The point of the wine bottle was to demonstrate how the visible presence of alcohol at a public agency would make people uncomfortable, explained Murray, who represents most of inland Contra Costa County.

“I don’t have a problem drinking alcohol,” Murray told her fellow BART directors. “I just don’t think it’s appropriate for a public agency to be doing this. It sends the wrong message.”

Two other directors, James Fang of San Francisco and fellow Contra Costa County representative Joel Keller, agreed with Murray, comparing the alcohol ads to pornography and cigarette ads.

But other directors didn’t view the change so severely. “I’m more worriedabout Hummers than I am about Cabernet Sauvignon for the future of this planet,” said Tom Radulovich, who represents a San Francisco district and proposed lifting BART’s ban on alcohol ads.

And Zoyd Luce, who represents eastern Alameda County, Castro Valley and the San Ramon Area, took it a step further, sarcastically suggesting that Christian ads and U.S. Army ads be excluded.

“It’s something (banning alcohol) that we tried during Prohibition and it didn’t do very well,” Luce said.

BART staff estimated that lifting the ban would increase its annual advertising revenue of $3.3 million by $400,000 a year by allowing its advertising contractor, CBS Outdoor, to sell space for advertising wine, beer and liquor.

Murray said that if the system was so intent on cashing in on the alcohol trade, “why don’t we have a bar car? The ferry has a bar, the Capitol Corridor has a bar car … Why don’t we really make big bucks and don’t just fiddle around with 17 percent?”

Unlike Murray, board president Carole Ward Allen, who represents Alameda and nearby Oakland neighborhoods, said she is pretty much a teetotaler, but believes that selling ad space for alcohol is acceptable within the limits approved Wednesday.

“If we crossed the line too far, then I’d be concerned,” she said.

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