No Light Rail in Vancouver!

San Jose’s Continuing Transit Disaster

Jan 26

2007

Consider the following:

• The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) has lost 35 percent of its transit riders in the past few years (see spreadsheet), mainly because financial problems forced it to severely cut back transit service.
• The Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission estimates that the cost of getting one person out of their car for one trip on a BART line to San Jose will be $100 (see MTC’s evaluation report of its Transportation Blueprint for the 21st Century, mentioned here but not available on line).
• San Jose-area voters soundly defeated a tax measure last June that would have provided funding VTA says is needed to build BART to San Jose.

Given these facts that should discourage almost anyone, what is VTA’s attitude about building BART to San Jose? Just do it! Not only that, VTA expects to spend at least $500,000 on just station art and “enhanced architecture.”

VTA wants to $185 million over the next two years on “studies” for the BART project. The whole project is expected to cost $4.7 billion for a sixteen-mile extension, or nearly $300 million per mile. Since the extension is via the current Fremont line, it will not offer direct San Francisco-to-San Jose service. Instead, people going that distance will have to go through the dreaded “Oakland wye,” which add a lot of time to any BART trip passing through Oakland.

Does that sound like a waste of money to you? The San Jose Downtown Association doesn’t agree. They want a “Grand Central Station”-type structure rather than just the “hole in the ground” that typifies most subway stations. “Think big,” says the Association’s director. “Don’t cheap out.”

Of course, it is easy to think big when you are thinking of other people’s money.

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Reprinted from The Antiplanner