VTA seeks a $900 million federal contribution toward the $2.1 billion Berryessa extension.  The ROD qualifies VTA to move forward in the process, and the next step is to execute a Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA) in February 2011, which would allow VTA to obtain the federal funding it needs to build the project.  Construction could begin in 2012, and revenue service could commence in 2018.

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.

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.

Update: For more details about the MTC meeting at which these numbers were revealed, please also see SF Streetsblog’s great write-up.

When Is Transit Service Redundant?

The numbers are grim, and they confirm that properly funding transit in the Bay Area will be a serious issue in the future, as operators struggle to produce a balanced budget each year. But looking beyond the latest set of numbers, the revised RTP does not constitute a substantial change in methodology. It does include a few new recommendations, but we believe that these recommendations — like many aspects of the RTP itself — fall short. In light of the regional shortfalls, MTC says we must investigate “transit sustainability,” carrying the implication that transit service must be cut until it attains a level that is “sustainable.” MTC suggests that such trimming is most natural in places that already enjoy “redundant” transit service. The Bay Area’s approach to transit operation and management has resulted in certain service inefficiencies on the regional level, in that each operator resembles an independent kingdom that cooperates only occasionally and reluctantly with neighboring kingdoms. Some areas receive too little service, while other areas receive more robust service than is arguably necessary. Sometimes, transit services do not quite connect; other times, they awkwardly overlap. At first blush, the idea of regarding the Bay Area’s many transit agencies as components of a larger network, in order to promote efficiency throughout the region, has underlying merit — particularly if it addresses uncoordinated fare policies. Then again, if MTC is so interested in investing money efficiently, then how are we to explain the agency’s longstanding commitment to projects like BART to San Jose and the Oakland Airport Connector? And if MTC is so interested in avoiding redundancy, perhaps it could also have guided us toward a superior regional vision in the first place, instead of scrambling to correct mistakes after the fact when the redundant infrastructure has already been built.

MTC has provided little in the way of precise detail about its regional study — but it did suggest a few initial examples of “redundant” inefficient transit service that it intends to scrutinize. The corridors that the agency has chosen as exemplars of “redundant” service are themselves a cause for concern, in that they either overlook or misunderstand the different roles fulfilled by various transit services. For example, MTC suggests that the Peninsula currently enjoys “redundant” service because SamTrans, Caltrain, and BART all operate in this area. BART and Caltrain between Millbrae and San Francisco do not serve identical corridors, but if you were going to make a redundancy argument on the Peninsula, that would be the place to start. But the purpose and reach of SamTrans bus service should not be perceived as being redundant to BART and Caltrain, which both function as commuter rail on the Peninsula. Even long-distance bus routes that parallel the rail corridors and feed into rail stations carry short haul trips that give those routes a fundamentally different purpose and ridership than the rail corridor they ostensibly duplicate.

MTC also considered the Bay Bridge/Transbay corridor, pointing out that BART, AC Transit’s Transbay buses, and ferries all provide redundant service between San Francisco and the inner East Bay. The Transbay corridor is the highest demand transit corridor in the Bay Area, capturing transit share that well exceeds the regional average. This is not surprising, in light of short headways, and the fact that BART’s Transbay Tube is one of very few places in the Bay Area where a transit trip is legitimately faster than its equivalent trip by automobile. The high demand means that “redundant” service is actually advantageous. We should remark that BART and the Transbay buses are not precisely duplicative, because AC Transit serves many East Bay neighborhoods that are distant from any BART station, thus allowing residents of those neighborhoods to travel to and from San Francisco via transit without driving and without suffering the time and fare penalty associated with transferring to BART. To the extent that BART and AC Transit actually do provide duplicate service in the literal Bay Bridge corridor, the duplicate service is an advantage. AC Transit provides additional seats that supplement BART’s strained capacity at peak commute hours, and many riders actually prefer the bus over BART for its comfort and wireless Internet connection. The services are complementary, rather than competitive. Particularly because the design of the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge precludes reintroducing surface rail on the bridge itself, the portfolio of Transbay bus service is one that we would ideally grow, or at least maintain at its current levels — not cut, based on a cursory perception that the service it provides is redundant to BART.

The BART to San Jose Fund

In this sense, MTC’s standard methodology, which prioritizes big-ticket suburban BART extensions above more cost-effective solutions, has not changed. MTC posits that the Bay Area must trim “redundant” transit service. This almost certainly refers to bus routes, which are crucial lifelines for the the transit-dependent — rather than, for instance, underutilized midday BART runs to Pittsburg/Bay Point and Millbrae. One of the great ironies of MTC’s redundancy analysis is that the revised RTP is in part geared toward providing additional funding for BART to San Jose — a project that itself involves constructing grade-separated BART infrastructure that directly duplicates miles of existing standard gauge track through Fremont, Milpitas, and San Jose. Santa Clara County projects a $2 billion shortfall in 2000 Measure A funds. How should this shortfall be filled? The proposal is to use $2 billion of revenue gathered from MTC’s planned network of High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes (click here and scroll down to read more about the HOT network). This is a problematic suggestion on its face, because it is unclear that the HOT lanes will even generate the revenue that MTC has alleged.

Furthermore, applying HOT revenue to fill the Measure A shortfall would constitute a rather startling reversal of policy. MTC itself has articulated an equitable principle that should guide funding choices for HOT revenue: the money that comes from toll lanes in a given corridor should be applied toward transit and other related improvements within that same corridor. For instance, HOT revenues could potentially fund better transit or bicycle/street improvements parallel to the freeway corridor from which those revenues were collected. It could also fill the transit operating shortfalls, which MTC has suggested could be reduced by cutting redundant service. However, many of the HOT lanes planned for Santa Clara County are not in the corridor of the proposed BART extension — for example, the lanes on Highways 85, 87, and 101 (south of Interstate 280 and Downtown San Jose). So there is a danger that HOT lane tolls collected on freeways that are distant from the BART alignment will nonetheless be appropriated in order to deliver the $2 billion necessary to fill the Measure A shortfall, which VTA has devoted primarily to BART. It is not enough, then, that VTA plans to either downscale or indefinitely delay on its promises to construct a full portfolio of transit improvements, all in the name of bringing BART to the South Bay. Now, even HOT revenues — which could nicely supplement efforts to remake the greater Valley into a more transit-oriented place, by investing in local transit and streetscape improvements — have now instead been proposed to shore up Measure A and the BART extension.

MTC has given the public a two-week window in which to comment on its proposed revisions to the Transportation 2035 plan. Comments will be received until 4:00 pm on Thursday, April 8, 2009. You can send a comment via mail to 101 Eighth Street, Oakland, CA 94607, Attn: Public Information; via E-mail to info@mtc.ca.gov; or via fax to 510.817.5848, Attn: Public Information.

Posted in AC Transit, BART, BART to San Jose, Caltrain, Ferries, Freeways, Golden Gate Transit, High-Speed Rail, MTC, Muni / SFMTA, Peninsula, Regional Rail, Regional Transportation Plan, SamTrans, South Bay, Transit Funding, VTA ]]> http://transbayblog.com/2009/03/26/shifting-funds-shifty-priorities/feed/ 8 transbay http://transbayblog.com/2009/03/20/preliminary-injunction-against-warm-springs-denied/ http://transbayblog.com/2009/03/20/preliminary-injunction-against-warm-springs-denied/#comments Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:29:26 +0000 Eric http://transbayblog.com/?p=3402 Continue reading »]]> 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.

Each side also addressed its likelihood of success with respect to the underlying claim. As described in this earlier post, there is a separate argument for each agency. MTC’s $91 million shift from Dumbarton Rail to Warm Springs was permitted if the shift was between projects that are “in the same corridor.” MTC justified its decision to move the funds on the ground that I mentioned at the end of this post — namely, that the legislation governing Regional Measure 2 funds could interpret the phrase “in the same corridor” quite broadly, as relieving congestion in a certain corridor, rather than being physically placed within that corridor. The legislature was interested in decreasing bridge congestion and increasing regional connectivity. Of course, it is very much the case that Dumbarton Rail — which would link numerous disconnected rail operators in the South Bay and is parallel to a bridge — is a superior match to this intention than the BART extension. But the more broadly you interpret the language, the easier it is to argue that MTC’s decision was legitimate.

In the case of ACTIA, the discussion concerned allocation of 2000 Measure B money funds. ACTIA did not have the discretion to allocate money to Warm Springs until full funding was assured for a BART extension into Santa Clara County. The intention has of course been that this would be the full extension through Milpitas and Downtown San Jose, with a terminus in the City of Santa Clara. However, the ballot language indicated an extension into the county was what was needed — implying that only a portion of the extension, as long as it reached Santa Clara County, would satisfy the “full funding assured” requirement. A VTA staff memo  from Carolyn Gonot (PDF) has surfaced indicating that VTA can indeed fund the $1.7 billion extension to Milpitas without the $750 million of New Starts federal funding that the FTA has not yet approved. In other words, the federal grant would be applied just to the next segment of the line, from Milpitas to Berryessa. VTA must also secure the federal grant in order to trigger the flow of funds from 2008 Measure B. (Note, however, that the lawyer on the petitioner’s side conceded that the funding to Milpitas was assured, even though the VTA staff memo was merely that — a memo — but not actually approved by the VTA Board.) Although an extension to Milpitas would include merely one of the six planned stations, it still qualifies as a fully funded extension into Santa Clara County. And that suffices to bolster ACTIA’s discretionary allocation of $224 million to Warm Springs.  Weighing the discussion on both sides about these points, Judge Roesch denied the preliminary injunction.

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%.

Rendering of Berryessa BART station. Courtesy of VTA.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission has already removed $91 million of Regional Measure 2 money that was slated for Dumbarton Rail (thus pulling the plug on that project at least for a couple decades) and reallocated it to fill the funding gap in the Warm Springs BART extension. The cost of the stub line to Berryessa is $2.1 billion; combined with the Warm Springs extension, some $3 billion will be spent to extend BART from its current Fremont terminal even further into the depths of Bay Area suburbia. VTA plans to use the rest of this year to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement while applying for section 5309 New Starts funding from the Federal Transit Administration. It anticipates an FTA Record of Decision in January 2010, and subsequent financial commitment from the federal government (in the form of an executed Full Funding Grant Agreement) is required to trigger the flow of 2008 Measure B sales tax money.

VTA marches forward with the truncated BART extension, but in light of current economic conditions, the budget is unsurprisingly grim — calling into question the agency’s sense of reality: even in these tough times it prioritizes a gold-plated rail extension, when it ought to focus on maintaining and improving the bus, light rail, and commuter rail service upon which the residents and workers of Santa Clara County currently rely. It is not yet clear to what extent this core service will be cut, or by how much fares will be increased, to set the budget right. Sales tax revenue for this fiscal year has been projected to decrease 6.76% from last year, followed by a 5% decrease in FY09-10, and a 3% decrease in FY10-11. VTA will lose over $6 million of State Transit Assistance funds for the latter half of this fiscal year, and as we have remarked before, STA funds are eliminated for subsequent years. VTA projects a $53.1 million shortfall in operating revenue by FY11-12, by which time a $50.1 million operating reserve will have vanished into thin air.

“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.

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?

We should at least pause to enjoy a substantial victory — a movement, really — of which Measure B was part. On November 4, voters passed several major and expensive transportation measures — not just Measure B, but also Measure Q in Sonoma and Marin for SMART, Measure R in Los Angeles, and of course Proposition 1A for high-speed rail — and this all in the midst of both a state budget crisis and depressed economic climate. Fuel prices have declined considerably since their summertime high, prompting at least some Angelenos to revert to driving; but the memory of gas prices past encouraged Californians, both in the north and the south, to vote in favor of expanding rail networks throughout the state. And yet, BART to San Jose serves as a special reminder that not all transit projects are created equal, and that those projects that suffer from imperfect planning may even be ill-advised. It was a distinctly local nuance, not easy to communicate to voters — and further lost in the shuffle of both a monumentally important national election, and the positive pro-transit prescience that swept through California. But as we encourage officials to pursue better and brighter projects, it is a nuance of which we should be continually aware. Yes, even with an Obama Administration that understands and values the potentially profound change that widespread investment in high-quality transit would trigger.

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:

• Measure C: If passed, Measure C would constitute voter approval of the Valley Transportation Plan 2035 — before the VTA Board has formally adopted it, which it plans to do next month in December. Since 1976, VTA has been legally obliged to prepare a comprehenisve county-wide transportation plan every six years, and to submit said plan to voters for a non-legally binding “advisory vote.” As such, this obligation is neither new nor unexpected, and VTA should have had the 2035 iteration prepared in advance of the election. Why should voters approve a plan whose exact contents and funding priorities are unknown to them?

• Measure D: As mentioned above, VTA is obliged to prepare a comprehensive county-wide transportation plan and submit it to voters every six years for an advisory vote. Although advisory votes are not legally binding, they at least afford voters a modicum of oversight of VTA’s actions. Additional oversight exists in the form of the Citizen’s Watchdog Committee, which reviews VTA’s expenditures; the Citizen’s Watchdog Committee was established in 2000 Measure A. Now, if Measure D passes, it would eliminate the requirement that the plan be submitted every six years to voters, and only the Citizen’s Watchdog Committee would review future plans. This would deprive voters of the opportunity to offer advisory votes on any future VTA transportation plans — thereby removing the VTA Board’s already very minimal accountability to voters.

Unlike BART’s and AC Transit’s Board of Directors, whose members are directly elected, VTA Board members are appointed. Measures C and D seek to eliminate what little power voters now have to review VTA’s actions and hold the agency accountable. Santa Clara County voters are strongly encouraged to be a voice for true transit justice and vision — and to express disapproval of VTA’s lack of the same — by voting No on Measures B, C, and D.

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.

Other than Dumbarton Rail, what transit projects could BART to San Jose jeopardize? Besides the planned bus rapid transit and light rail extensions, foremost among the projects at risk is Caltrain electrification. Electrifying Caltrain is an overdue upgrade that is crucial to increasing ridership, establishing independence from rising fuel costs, and transforming the Peninsula commuter rail service into something closer to robust metro service. Electrification, which is to be paid for jointly by San Mateo, San Francisco, and Santa Clara Counties, is supported by both San Mateo and San Francisco. Santa Clara County, on the other hand, has its eyes set on the “loftier” goal of a BART extension, so it has resisted committing funds to electrification — despite the fact that electrified express Caltrain would provide superior service between San Francisco and San Jose that is superior to BART. Voters supported Caltrain electrification as part of the package of projects that would be funded with the 2000 Measure A half-percent sales tax. The BART extension is itself a 2000 Measure A project, which is the problem. Although originally intended to use only one-third of the Measure A transit funding pie that would benefit all of Santa Clara County, the BART extension threatens to consume the whole pie, to the detriment of cities located between Palo Alto and Santa Clara, who would benefit from electrified Caltrain, but not BART. It also threatens to force cuts to VTA’s already pared down bus service. In other words, transit improvements in all of Santa Clara County are being put on hold so that Downtown San Jose can finally have its own BART subway.

The BART extension has been plagued by financial difficulty almost since voters approved 2000 Measure A. VTA simply has not had (and still does not have) the financial wherewithal to finance construction and operation of this expensive project, no matter the message to the contrary that it would like to send to voters. In 2002, the agency slashed bus service while facing a $6 billion budget deficit over a couple decades, but still refused to give up on BART. In 2004, and again in 2005, the extension suffered a blow when it was not recommended for federal funding, in the absence of proof that VTA could afford to operate the extension. In 2005, VTA itself recognized the difficulty and temporarily withdrew its request for federal funds, but later still continued to persevere. In 2006, another transportation tax was placed on the ballot, which voters defeated. In 2007, VTA received a scathing audit report from the Hay Group, in response to which VTA launched the so-called “New VTA” campaign that basically amounted to a reallocation of resources to higher ridership corridors. And now, in 2008, VTA is once again asking voters for more money, with the eighth-percent sales tax in Measure B. The agency has alleged not only that the tax will be sufficient to cover the BART operation and maintenance subsidy without jeopardizing existing service — it even alleges that there would be a $154 million surplus by the year 2036. Unbelievable? BayRail Alliance thought so, scrutinized the balance book, and found that under the terms of VTA’s Comprehensive Agreement with BART executed in 2001, there was no surplus to be found: only more deficits.

In light of both this troubled past and probable troubled future of the BART to San Jose extension, the very least that VTA owes South Bay residents is a serious, rational, and unbiased discussion of the Valley’s transportation future; but this discussion has been stifled by VTA and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. In particular, VTA’s unwillingness to consider attractive standard-gauge alternatives is troubling. In 2005, BayRail Alliance proposed the Caltrain Metro East plan, which is a serious alternative that is in many ways superior to the proposed BART alignment. Caltrain Metro East would use electric multiple units capable of traveling faster than BART trains, and with standard gauge, it could be built at far lower cost than BART; stations were proposed for Milpitas, North San Jose, Mineta San Jose International Airport, and then joining the main Caltrain line at San Jose Diridon. Although Caltrain Metro East would not directly serve Downtown San Jose, the alignment instead directly serves Mineta and North San Jose’s Golden Triangle, which is a larger job center than downtown; it is also a region of San Jose that is targeted to substantially grow and change in the future. (The BART proposal, on the other hand, directly serves downtown, but Golden Triangle-bound riders would still have to transfer to light rail at the Montague/Capitol station situated next to the Great Mall.) Caltrain Metro East would also not serve the transit-dependent neighborhoods of East San Jose, but light rail would actually do a better job of serving that area than the single token BART station that has been proposed at Alum Rock.

The decision to build (or not build) BART to San Jose will greatly affect the future of Valley transit in the upcoming decades. The question is: do we plunk down all the money for a single BART corridor, or do we apply funds throughout VTA’s service area? Doing the latter would result in less snazzy transit than BART, but it would at least allow for construction of projects approved by voters in 2000 Measure A, and many others still. Not just Caltrain electrification, but also: (i) a complete Vasona Junction light rail extension; (ii) Capitol Expressway light rail extension that loops around to Guadalupe, absorbing both of the proposed incremental extensions to Eastridge Transit Center and Nieman; (iii) the Downtown-East Valley light rail extension; and (iv) an extensive bus rapid transit portfolio that would improve service on several key corridors, including El Camino Real, Stevens Creek-San Carlos, Sunnyvale-Cupertino, and Monterey Highway. Some key BRT corridors could later be upgraded to light rail as demand requires. But rather than just listing projects, it’s perhaps most powerful to have a visual tool. Below are two maps that I made using the Google satellite maps:

• The map on the left depicts the BART alignment. The assumption there is that constructing BART will use all available funds (and then some), thus jeopardizing the many worthy projects listed earlier. Although we might get BART on the chosen corridor, there will be little improvement — indeed, quite possibly, service cuts instead — on many of the other corridors that crisscross the sprawled Valley.
• On the right is the Caltrain Metro East alternative, complete with the light rail and rapid bus extensions that could then be built with funds that would have been swallowed by BART. These include 2000 Measure A projects, projects that been conceived since 2000 Measure A, and a couple other corridors I have inserted as potential enhancements after the busiest corridors have been upgraded.

There is a pronounced difference between the two scenarios:

Color scheme in the maps: blue = standard gauge heavy rail (Caltrain, Amtrak, ACE); red = BART; green = VTA light rail; yellow = bus rapid transit.

And so, to finally close off this somewhat lengthy, rambling series of posts on BART to San Jose, I would like to leave readers with the following three questions:

1. Which of the above two maps would likely result in more stations around which to focus more widespread transit-oriented development, so as to help transform the overwhelmingly suburban, auto-oriented South Bay into a denser, more livable place?

2. Which of the above two maps provides better and more equitable transit coverage, so that a greater number of people are closer to a superior transit option? and,

3. In the end, isn’t that really the point?