Transbay Blog

Mary Avenue Bridge; courtesy of LERA.

So many freeways and expressways crisscross the auto-oriented sprawl of Silicon Valley, and they contribute to a physical environment that is inhospitable, forming actual and pyschological barriers to those who attempt to get around on foot or a bicycle. But pedestrians and bicyclists alike will be able to enjoy bridges that will provide additional routes of access over otherwise-impenetrable walls of freeway. Two new bridges at Borregas Avenue in Sunnyvale, crossing over both Highway 237 and Highway 101, have finally opened, and they will allow an anticipated 2,000 daily bicyclists and pedestrians to cross over the freeway instead of traveling a couple miles out of their way to the nearest through street. The spans will also ease access to Sunnyvale Baylands Park and the nearby Borregas VTA light rail station. Then, on April 30, a more visually impressive bike-ped crossing over Interstate 280 will also open, connecting the two separated halves of Mary Avenue, between Sunnyvale and Cupertino near the Highway 85 interchange. The Mary Avenue bridge will be the first example in California of a cable stayed bridge crossing over a freeway. Still further bike-ped improvements are due later this summer in Mountain View, Santa Clara, and San Jose. The Borregas corridor and Mary Avenue bridges are just two components of VTA’s rather extensive 25-year Bicycle Expenditure Plan, which represents a considerable investment in livable streets improvements scattered throughout Santa Clara County. Yours truly may prefer walking and transit over bicycling, but we nonetheless look forward to the day when San Francisco’s Bicycle Plan will have completed its wandering journey through environmental review — so that new bicycle infrastructure in San Francisco can catch up to these improvements in the South Bay.

First, A Few Numbers (and Acronyms)

Regular readers may recall our previous discussion of Transportation 2035, the latest update to MTC’s ongoing efforts on the Regional Transportation Plan. Earlier this year, we wrote a special feature that describes the multifaceted plan, fleshing out how MTC has proposed to allocate $226 billion of local, state, and federal transportation funding that was expected to become available to the Bay Area over the next quarter century. However, changes in the economy and funding climate have necessitated that MTC revise a few aspects of the RTP. The State of California yanked away STA money that funds transit operations; in the Bay Area, this means that local transit operators will lose access to over $55 million that they were relying upon for the remainder of this fiscal year, and no STA funding at all will be provided in upcoming years. Assuming that the state reinstates STA funding in five years, the Bay Area will have lost $1.2 billion of STA and spillover funds in the interim; MTC also projected a $4.5 billion loss in TDA revenue over the 25-year RTP timeline. Another change is VTA’s recent announcement that it can only afford to build the BART extension to San Jose as far as Berryessa Station, postponing the construction of the downtown subway alignment. This, in turn, is connected to the issue of declining transportation sales tax revenue; this is potentially problematic throughout the region, not just in Santa Clara County, although it is not yet clear just how problematic. Considering the new forecasts for transit revenue, the region’s transit operation shortfall will increase from $3.2 to $8.5 billion. This includes a $283 million shortfall for AC Transit, a $442 million shortfall for Golden Gate Transit, a $1.6 billion shortfall for SamTrans, a $1.9 billion shortfall for Muni, and a whopping $3.2 billion shortfall for VTA, which is the worst operation shortfall in the region. Meanwhile, the transit capital shortfall will increase from $16.1 to $17.1 billion. It also takes into consideration that the cost of the BART extension to San Jose has increased from $6.1 billion to $7.6 billion (year of expenditure). Overall, the $226 billion plan has been reduced in size to a $218 billion plan. The plan adds $1.3 billion of revenue: about $280 million in connection with AC Transit’s Measure VV parcel tax, and $1 billion of VTA joint development revenue. It also anticipates $3 billion of funds for high-speed rail, with half coming from Proposition 1A, and the other half coming from the federal stimulus package’s $8 billion allocation to high-speed rail.

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This morning, Judge Frank Roesch (of Alameda County Superior Court) heard arguments in the Lewis v. Metropolitan Transportation Commission case we discussed two weeks ago. The petitioners (former BART directors Lewis and Nakadegawa, and TRANSDEF) sought a preliminary injunction of MTC’s and ACTIA’s total allocation of about $315 million to the BART extension to Warm Springs, seeking to have those discretionary actions reversed as an illegal expenditure of public funds. However, Judge Roesch denied the preliminary injunction and took the case under submission, so none of the funding for BART to Warm Springs has been disturbed. In order to grant a preliminary injunction, Judge Roesch considered the irreparable harm that would be incurred by both parties by granting or not granting the injunction — and he appeared to be sympathetic to MTC’s and ACTIA’s arguments that the irreparable harm to them (by delaying and increasing the cost of the project) exceeded, or at least balanced, the irreparable harm to petitioners by proceeding with the project. Although BART was not listed as a party to the lawsuit, BART was also present and defended the project as being an important source of construction jobs. That said, if money is improperly allocated to a project, declaring the status of that project as shovel-ready is rather beside the point.

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Transit ridership has reached a 52-year high, reports APTA, with 10.7 billion transit trips taken in the year 2008. This represent a 4% increase over 2007, and vehicle miles traveled decreased 3.6% nationwide during the same period of time; it also represents a 38% increase since 1995, a rate that outpaces growth in both population and VMT. APTA’s data indicates that light rail systems enjoyed the largest ridership jump (8.3% increase), followed by paratransit (5.9% increase), commuter rail (4.7% increase), buses (3.9% increase), and heavy rail subways (3.5% increase). Although the Overhead Wire cautions us with a reality check, it is so encouraging to see that interest in transit nationwide survived both job losses and the decline in gas prices from a high near $5/gallon earlier in 2008.

With the notable exceptions of VTA’s light rail system and San Francisco Muni generally (both of whose ridership growth per mode fell behind the national average), ridership increases for major Bay Area transit operators not only reflect, but in most instances actually outpace, the national trend. Our commuter rail operators (ACE, Caltrain, and Capitol Corridor) significantly outpaced the national average, as did bus ridership for AC Transit and VTA:

APTA’s statistics also noted that some of the largest jumps in bus ridership occurred in cities with population under 100,000 (9.3% increase for smaller communities, compared to a 3.9% average increase across all bus operators). This trend was also reflected in the Bay Area. Some of our smaller bus-only transit operators enjoyed comparable increases in ridership, e.g. Fairfield-Suisin Transit (9.73% increase), Tri Delta (9.91% increase), and Rio Vista Delta Breeze, whose 3,400 daily bus riders in 2007 jumped to 8,400 in 2008. WHEELS ridership increased just 5.35%.

Although the underlying objective of BART to Silicon Valley may have been to furnish Diridon and Downtown San Jose with new gleaming subway stations, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority is currently setting its sight only as far as Berryessa Station in East San Jose: about two miles short of where the tracks are planned to dive into a subway under Santa Clara Street. The Berryessa station area is currently home to the San Jose Flea Market; it is hemmed in by nearby low-density, auto-oriented residential development, and it features no major transit connection point. It is, to say the least, an unlikely location for the terminus of a major rapid transit line. But the terminus it may indeed be, thanks to the fact that VTA is now faced with flat sales tax revenue through the year 2036 and cannot afford to build any more of the line. The extension to Berryessa is now expected to be complete by the year 2018, with the remainder of the extension following by 2025 at the earliest. The ballot text to 2008 Measure B opted against clearly explicating for voters the possibility (or was it near certainty?) that the project would be built in phases, rather than in one fell swoop from Milpitas, through San Jose to Santa Clara. Indeed, official reactions from Reed, Guardino, et al, immediately following the November 2008 election cried grudgingly for a phased project only before it became apparent that Measure B had actually passed — immediately followed by heaved sighs of relief once the vote tallies barely edged out past the required 2/3 mark. Nonetheless, the segment of the BART extension that VTA plans to submit this year for federal funding includes only two of the six planned stations: (i) the station at Montague and Capitol in Milpitas, where BART would connect with VTA light rail, and (ii) the station at Berryessa, a rendering of which is pictured below.

Rendering of Berryessa BART station; courtesy of VTA.

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Yes, Transbay Blog is technically still on a hiatus of sorts, but, at the risk of having to rename it the BART-to-San Jose Blog, I couldn’t resist sharing a gem from Michael Burns, General Manager of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority:

“Given that voters have endorsed BART not once, but twice,” VTA General Manager Michael Burns said, “from the staff’s perspective the priority is clear, and that priority is BART. [...] It’s clear we can’t see the BART project getting ($750 million in federal) money if we’re spending our local money on other projects,” Burns said in an interview earlier this week. “That just doesn’t add up.”

Sacrificing countywide transportation improvements, and funneling all money and efforts into BART? You don’t say. The reference to “other projects” of course includes Caltrain electrification; building high-speed rail will require electrification in any case (along with grade separations and other upgrades to the Caltrain corridor), albeit over a longer timeline than if VTA had prioritized funds earlier. “Other projects” also includes improvements to the Santa Clara-Alum Rock corridor, which could use an upgrade as much as any corridor in the South Bay. At one point in the not-so-distant past, this corridor through Downtown San Jose and the largely transit-dependent neighborhoods of East San Jose was slated for a light rail line that was supposed to debut service this year, in 2008; but it was not built, then it was later downgraded to a rapid bus, and it has since been put on hold altogether. Also envisioned was bus rapid transit for Monterey Highway, a completed Vasona light rail extension, and a Capitol Expressway light rail extension that would circle around to meet the existing Guadalupe Line, via incremental extensions built to Eastridge and Nieman. Michael Burns emphasizes that in 2008, the voters spoke in favor of BART; but in 2000, the voters had already spoken more definitively in favor of a countywide transportation plan that included not just BART, but also a more complete light rail network, along with electrification and and expansion of Caltrain. (2000 Measure A, which assessed a larger 1/2-percent sales tax for transportation, earned 70.6% of the vote that year; in contrast, 2008 Measure B will establish a smaller 1/8-percent tax, and it squeaked by with 66.78% of the vote this year.) VTA’s prioritization of the BART extension above all else is long-standing, cemented in place years before Measure B; Measure B simply gave VTA the green light it has long been aching to speed through. Bringing the axe to the forsaken “other projects” should not be interpreted as VTA’s eagerness to respond to the will of the voters, as Burns might have us believe. It has been the case all along that VTA has not had the wherewithal to finance both BART and the “other projects,” thrown anew into sharp relief by the sales tax revenue shortfall. We will, of course, wait with bated breath for VTA’s updated cost estimates for the BART extension, to be released in February 2009.

Top: San Jose Diridon Station, courtesy of MTC. Bottom: New York City’s Grand Central Terminal, courtesy of NY Links.

Well, it’s official. Santa Clara County Measure B — assessing a 1/8 percent sales tax, the proceeds from which will be applied to operation and maintenance of the BART to San Jose extension — finally passed, with 66.78% of the vote; not enough uncounted ballots remain to turn back the vote.  Shortly after the election, when the vote was still under the required 2/3 threshold, SVLG and Measure B supporters had all but conceded, and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed grudgingly threw his support behind a shortened route (terminating at Milpitas, Berryessa, or Alum Rock, thus postponing the Downtown San Jose subway) while he simultaneously fished for $14 billion of federal bailout money to spend on BART, among other things. But no matter now: the Measure B results are all but certified, though with the tax proceeds not quite in hand; the tax will not be assessed until a federal contribution appears. Will this be the last that we hear of shortened routes and BART taxes? Perhaps not, and a great deal of necessary project funding has yet to materialize. Nonetheless: the Valley Transportation Authority can interpret (in fact, already has interpreted) voter affirmation of the sales tax, however marginally above the 2/3 required for passage, as a clear indication that its plans are moving in the right direction. Never mind, of course, what other more cost-effective expansion projects “moving in the right direction” might jeopardize — to say nothing of existing transit service, whose funds are already tirelessly targeted by the Governor, including very recently for an additional $230 million cut across the State ($83 million in the Bay Area). But since when has BART to San Jose ever been about transit effectiveness? If it wasn’t already clear, the Mercury News made it crystal clear that the primary interest at stake is not transportation, but civic self-esteem. The article rejoices in the fact that San Jose Diridon Station — already served by Caltrain, Amtrak, ACE and VTA, and planned to be served by BART and high-speed rail — is poised to become the Grand Central Station of the West. “We’ll no longer be in the shadow of San Francisco. I’ve waited a long time for it,” proudly proclaimed Ian North in the Merc article. Wait: hasn’t the moniker “Grand Central Station of the West” already been reserved for Transbay — you know, in that other city in the Bay Area? San Jose wants to stretch its wings and fly, by creating a dense, active downtown adjacent to a grand terminal at Diridon. We should not begrudge it that; after all, this website exists, if for no other purpose, than to celebrate exactly that sort of vision. But at what cost to the greater region?

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VTA has placed three measures on this November’s Santa Clara County ballot: Measures, B, C and D. Santa Clara County voters are strongly urged to vote NO on all three measures. We’ll begin with Measure B.

If passed, Measure B would institute a thirty-year 1/8-percent sales tax in Santa Clara County to generate money to operate the BART to San Jose extension, in the event that state and federal contributions are secured. However, even with 2000 Measure A and 2008 Measure B funds combined, VTA will not likely have sufficient funding to build and operate the BART extension, which suggests that funds will be removed from other long-overdue projects like Caltrain electrification. VTA may also be forced to cut bus and light rail service, the successful operation of which ought to be a primary priority. This last point should be carefully considered: building BART will attract new riders (though not nearly as many as projected), but cutting VTA service will mean losing current riders; it is no coincidence that transit advocates are the very people who oppose the BART extension. In the end, the question to ask is not only what BART’s ridership will be, but what the net ridership will be — how many cars, on balance, will be taken off the roads? New BART riders cannot be viewed as a true victory unless there is an increase (and at this cost, a pretty monumental increase) in net ridership. The onus is on VTA to show that it can succesfully overcome all of these obstacles, and it has not done it so far. For more on why BART to San Jose is an ill-conceived project, read this series of posts.

Moreover, constructing just one BART corridor will not be nearly enough to transform Santa Clara County from the auto-oriented place it is now. Instead of diverting all accumulated funds to a single corridor, VTA would be well-advised to replace its BART plans with a robust (but nonetheless more cost-effective) rail link between Fremont and San Jose — and to pursue an aggressive portfolio of bus rapid transit and light rail extensions that would encompass the entire County, including those very projects that voters decreed should be allocated the bulk of 2000 Measure A funds. Such a program would yield dozens of stations instead of just six: meaning there would be far more than just six BART stations around which to build dense transit-oriented development; this is key if we ever hope to effect real change in Santa Clara County’s land use and travel patterns. The County absolutely deserves better transit than it has now, both rail and buses. But BART to San Jose is quite simply not the right fit.

And for that matter, voters are also encouraged to vote No on Measure C and No on Measure D, which are two additional ballot measures from VTA, both of which have the express goal of relieving VTA of accountability to Santa Clara County voters:

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As things stand now, reasonably frequent rail service circles almost the entirety of San Francisco Bay. Caltrain serves the western shore of the Bay, while BART serves the eastern shore down to Fremont, and four BART routes operate in the Transbay Tube. The missing hole is the segment between Fremont and San Jose Diridon Station, and it is exactly this segment that VTA seeks to plug with the BART extension. This gap in rail service is currently bridged only by low intensity transit service: a handful of commuter trains daily and VTA express buses. It should certainly be filled with more robust rail service that runs on reasonable headways. But must the gap be filled with BART, whose technology is better-suited to subway-metro service than to regional commuter service with widely-spaced stations? What would justify constructing expensive elevated structures and subway tunnels to house BART’s broad gauge track, which would closely parallel standard gauge track already in use? Very high ridership would perhaps justify the price tag; but as we have already seen, the official ridership projections are exceedingly optimistic, and will not likely be met within the two-decade time frame.

With BART comes cost overruns; it happened with the San Mateo County extension to Millbrae/SFO, and it will happen with BART to San Jose. The difference between these two extensions is primarily in the magnitude of cost. BART to San Jose would be the largest expansion since the system originally commenced revenue service in 1972, conservatively estimated for at least $6 billion (already four times the cost of the Millbrae/SFO extension). VTA may not have a true handle on the cost, but $8-10 billion seems well within the realm of possibility. And with Measure B on the November 4, 2008 ballot, VTA is stifling the information that it has managed to piece together with regard to the extension’s increasing costs, so as to not jeopardize passage of the sales tax increase, the proceeds from which would be applied to the BART extension. But the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has allocated a limited amount of funds to transit expansion. The money for budget overruns must come from somewhere, and it will be siphoned from other transit projects. It’s not that this is a remote possibility: it is a very real danger. In fact, it’s already happening. Dumbarton Rail is a worthy plan to reinstate a southern Bay rail crossing. Had the Altamont alignment been selected for high-speed rail, high-speed trains would have used the rail bridge — but even without high-speed rail, Dumbarton Rail would connect Caltrain to rail services in the East Bay at an intermodal hub in Union City. But just last month, MTC snatched $91 million of Regional Measure 2 funds that were originally earmarked for the rehabilitation of Dumbarton Rail and tentatively reallocated it to the BART Warm Springs extension, an extension that Alameda County has supported, and which would be a first phase springboard into BART to San Jose. And if BART to San Jose commences construction, this would be only the beginning.

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In a Merc editorial last week, Caltrans director Will Kempton urged us to support BART to San Jose because “transportation professionals with 70 years of combined experience” support the project. Kempton’s piece also proclaims that the inflated ridership projection, in the vicinity of 100,000 daily riders, is “solid,” a statement that appears highly dubious in light of all available evidence. In 2000, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission studied many potential Bay Area capital improvements for transit, ranging from rail projects to rapid bus corridors — including a commuter rail option from Union City BART to San Jose, but the report also contemplated a BART extension south of Warm Springs to San Jose. BART and VTA carried out another study at about the same time, but the two studies yielded vastly different results. MTC’s report produced an approximate projection of 11,500 daily riders. Unimpressive, perhaps, but at least it was honest. Even in 2000, the extension was estimated to cost over $4 billion; at $4 billion for just 11,500 riders, the MTC projection exposed the San Jose extension for the cost-ineffective project it was (and still is).

Vancouver? Or Downtown San Jose in 2030? Photo Credit: Flickr user Tallyn.

Meanwhile, the VTA study projected 78,000 daily riders. The pronounced difference between the two projections is explained by the fact that the latter was the product of a fantastical land use and growth model that was based on a multifold increase in both the residential population and the daytime work population, housed in new skyscrapers that would both blanket downtown and push its boundaries. And while we might be momentarily enchanted with the vision of a truly dense urban center to crown Silicon Valley’s self-proclaimed “capital city,” we cannot endorse predicating the construction of an overpriced BART line on a fabricated growth model that was based on numbers not one inch short of outlandish: 180,000 new residents, 176,000 new workers, and some 144 million square feet of additional office space — all in the space of two decades. In 2005, the projection time scale was cleverly expanded from 2025 to the year 2030, making room for an even higher projection of 111,500 riders that was allegedly based on a more realistic model that used ABAG’s projections for transit-oriented development. And in 2006, the figure retreated to about 104,000 daily riders after the two downtown San Jose stations were consolidated into one longer station box spanning a few blocks of Santa Clara Street.

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