You speak of quality of life. Consider what will occur when VTA is forced to cut bus service, so that funds can be moved from bus operation to cover the BART operation shortfall. What happens to the quality of life for people dependent on that bus service?

I absolutely agree that the South Bay needs better transit. It needs better rail transit and better bus transit. But BART to San Jose is not the answer.

Going to/from SF I used to fly through OAK almost exclusively, since it was closest to a BART connection, but now I take great pains to make sure I can fly out of SFO due to its very easy BART access.

I am thankful for the SFO extension every time I travel.

I look forward to BART to San Jose, =) Getting between SF and San Jose on Caltrain is fast, but only at peak hours and only if you want to get between 4th and King and the Shark Tank.

In real travel time from Downtown SF to Downtown San Jose, BART will be faster. A no-waiting trip.

@Steve et al: Light rail was originally planned to connect the South San Jose sprawl with the North First / Golden Triangle office parks (Cisco, semiconductor firms, etc. are based there) , skipping Downtown. Civic leaders wanted to serve Downtown as well, so the alignment was designed to run in a transit mall. This is the speed bottleneck in the system — there are multiple 90-degree turns and trains are limited to 10-15 mph in downtown (the tracks aren’t grade separated). There are a lot of other 90-degree turns and poor engineering choices in the system — most due to political wrangling — but the downtown jog is the main reason why service can’t compete with travel speeds of the auto, especially with the buildout of the highway and expressway system in the South Bay.

@thamsenman: Caltrain serves most job centers in the South Bay indirectly (through transfers to shuttles or light rail) — but for the San Francisco / Peninsula commuter only. Bart to San Jose is primarily focused on one commute pattern — East Bay to South Bay. SF to South Bay is ancillary and Bart likely won’t pick up these commuters because its non-competitive on time. This is a fairly heavily traveled pattern; one only needs to look at the gridlock on 880 during rush hour to get a sense of the amount of people that travel to the South Bay from the East Bay every day. The big question isn’t whether transit is needed for that commute pattern — it is — but what the appropriate transit mode should be built for that pattern based on non-inflated ridership numbers.

BUT…
If I were a betting man and the economy wasn’t in the tank, I would have put my money on this sales tax passing fairly easily. My boss supports it still, my mom will probably vote yes, and a lot of old friends will probably vote for it. They have no idea what the SVLG or Ron Diridon is, so its not like theyre voting for it out because the cognescenti is pushing the measure. The truth is that Bart is seen as more convenient vis-a-vis other transit options — 15-minute headways (“it seems like you dont have to wait as long for a train”), constant 50 mph electro-motive travel (“it feels faster”) make it a more viscerally appealing option versus a promise to create a caltrain-like metro east project on the east side of town or running express buses. Most people in the South Bay have used Bart for some reason or other and they generally have a high opinion of the system. Basically, the Bart brand is very, very strong even in a county that doesn’t have bart. That’s something that’s very hard to beat. (Also, I’d say a lot of South Bay residents don’t commute out of the area — so they view Bart as a weekend-trip system, and Bart on the weekend beats the pants off Caltrain on the weekend [1-hour headways?])

Now that people are very, very worried about money, I’d say that we might see the tax fail.

I remember there was a proposal for something like that, called Caltrain Metro East. I don’t think it got off the ground but it would be much cheaper than BART.