The Santa Clara County ballot for the election this November 4, 2008, will include Measure B, which, if approved by voters, would assess a 1/8 percent sales tax, the proceeds from which would be applied to the proposed BART extension to Santa Clara through Milpitas and San Jose. The San Jose BART extension has long been on my to-do list of topics to write about, and this development was just the ticket to motivate jumpstarting some posts about the project. This post will serve as a table of contents for those posts; for future reference, the posts will also be cross-linked on the Transit Planning & Projects page.
- Volume 1: A Long-Expected Party (The history and politics of BART to San Jose.)
- Volume 2: The Shadow of the Past (Assessing BART’s most recent extension to Millbrae and SFO.)
- Volume 3: Wicked, Tricksy, False (Evaluating the credibility of the official ridership projections for BART to San Jose.)
- Volume 4: All’s Well As Ends Better (Exploring the danger of BART, and a better solution for how to improve South Bay transit.)
the Santa Clara VTA Riders Union (not affiliated with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority) just came out against the BART to SJ tax. Visit their website:
http://www.vtaridersunion.org/
The local Sierra Club chapter also opposes the tax:
Click to access Election_Insight_2008.pdf
When even transit advocates and environmentalists oppose a transit tax, you know it’s a bad idea.