The Antiplanner

Smart and Dumb at VTA

23rd July 2008

Smart and Dumb at VTA

posted in News commentary, Transportation |

San Jose’s Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) has announced that it will start a bus-rapid transit service from Santa Clara to Alum Rock. This was originally supposed to be a light-rail line projected to cost nearly $400 million. As bus-rapid transit, it will cost only $128 million. The light-rail line would not open until 2021; BRT will begin in 2012. Light rail would operate every 15 minutes; BRT every six. BRT was also projected to attract nearly three times as many riders at a lower operating cost than light rail.

Has sanity somehow struck the nation’s worst-managed transit agency? Apparently not, for VTA also looks set to ask voters for a 1/8-cent sales tax to pay for a BART line to San Jose. This sales tax would raise the $42 million per year that VTA estimates it needs just to operate this line. Actual construction — the cost of which is now estimated to be well over $6 billion — would have to be funded out of other money.

This BART line is quite possibly the dumbest rail transit proposal in a nation full of dumb rail transit proposals. Although the people who ride it naturally love BART, professional transit experts widely regarded it as a failure. It cost far more than projected, does not carry as many people as projected, and steals money from other Bay Area transit agencies that could carry far more people at a far lower cost.

Since 1982, BART ridership has nearly doubled, increasing by about 50 million trips per year. Bay Area bus ridership, meanwhile, has fallen by 140 million trips per year, mainly because bus agencies have been deprived of funds. What a success story.

In 2003, BART was extended to the San Francisco Airport, and ridership was so far below predictions that the San Mateo Transit Agency, which was obligated to fund operating costs, had to cut bus service to keep it going. The latest ridership numbers for the line, about 35,000 trips per day, are a third lower than the 50,000 that was projected.

The BART-to-San-Jose project will be far dumber than the Airport BART line. As previously noted here the environmental impact report for this line predicts that building it will have virtually no effect on traffic congestion. The line connects with the rest of the BART system at Fremont, so anyone wanting to go from San Jose to San Francisco would end up taking an indirect route through Oakland and the dreaded Oakland Wye, which is very slow and overcapacity even without new trains from San Jose. This would take more than the hour and 20 minutes that is required to drive the distance in traffic.

The Antiplanner suspects that VTA is going for bus-rapid transit on the Alum Rock route only because it is so strapped for funds that it has to cut costs. If it had plenty of money, it would probably build light rail even if though it is projected to carry barely more than a third of BRT riders.

The good news is that many normally pro-transit groups, such as the Sierra Club and the Bay Area Transportation Land-Use Coalition, oppose building BART to San Jose because of its great expense. Increasing frequencies on the San Jose-to-San Francisco CalTrains commuter trains, they say, would cost far less and be a far more cost-effective way of improving transit. Between these groups and the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association, it seems likely that opponents can persuade enough people to vote against the 1/8th-cent sales tax that it will not get the supermajority required for passage.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under News commentary, Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 19 responses to “Smart and Dumb at VTA”

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  1. 1 On July 23rd, 2008, prk166 said:

    “The good news is that many normally pro-transit groups…”

    And that is a big part of the problem we have today, that “transit” has come to mean “rail”.

    posted on July 23rd, 2008 at 6:43 am

  2. 2 On July 23rd, 2008, bennett said:

    “And that is a big part of the problem we have today, that “transit” has come to mean “rail”.”

    No doubt. I would also add that “Dept. of Transportation” has come to mean “Dept. of highway building.”

    posted on July 23rd, 2008 at 7:29 am

  3. 3 On July 23rd, 2008, Hugh Jardonn said:

    Is anybody else angered by the return of the BART tax? Although the San Jose Mercury just reported the news, it has been an open secret that VTA, pushed by Carl Guardino, was bringing the tax proposal back despite the defeat of the 2006 Measure A sales tax proposal.

    The Merc article states “The transit district will meet next month to put a one-eighth-cent measure before voters this fall. It would raise about $42 million a year, with every penny going toward the operating and maintenance costs of a BART line from Fremont to the South Bay.” However, the article also points out “Though the tax would raise only $42 million a year of the roughly $50 million needed to run BART” and that the “The tax would fund only one project, BART, unlike past measures that included dozens of projects from road widenings to transit extensions.”

    So, even with the new tax, there’s still not enough for the BART line, the capital cost of which is now in excess of $6BILLION.

    Exactly how bad is this project?

    It is such a stinker that transit advocate Michael D. Setty actually agrees with the AP on this. In fact, Setty’s article is titled “I Must Agree (Somewhat) with O’Toole in This Case” which emphasizes the point. Google his publictransit.us site and search on “BART.”

    The “Santa Clara VTA Riders Union” [not affiliated with VTA] has a useful “BART to San Jose News and Hidden Facts on BART” page. Google the group’s name and check out the site.

    Also, transit advocates “Bay Rail Alliance” is promoting a better, more cost-effective alternative: Google “Caltrain Metro East.”

    Finally, for some general observations on VTA, google the “VTA Watch” blog.

    Meanwhile, word is out that the California Bureau of State Audits (BSA) has indicated it will release its audit report on VTA on July 31st at 9:00 a.m., at which time the report will be posted on the BSA website. The VTA audit is number 2007-129.

    We can only hope that the audit contains some bad news about VTA’s finances that make them reconsider BART. VTA needs to go back to the drawing board, instead of always asking the voters for more money.

    The bad news is the opponents of the BART project, some of whom you list above, will be vastly out-spent by Carl Guardino and his grossly misnamed “Silicon Valley Leadership Group.”

    posted on July 23rd, 2008 at 8:50 am

  4. 4 On July 23rd, 2008, msetty said:

    Both the VTA and San Francisco Muni have a unique talent for building light rail lines that cost two or three times what they should, e.g., $90 million/mile in the case of the East Santa Clara Street proposal, and over $100 million/mile for the recently opened 3rd Street LRT line in San Francisco. I advocate bus and rail projects with ridership commensurate with capital costs, which the BART to San Jose proposal clearly is not.

    VTA and Muni also have a unique talent for inflating operating costs, if the $1 million per mile per year expense for maintenance (track, stations, and overhead??) is correct. I could understand such costs for a heavy rail system like BART given the relatively high traffic density, but an LRT system!?

    VTA has the dubious distinction of the highest unit operating costs for buses and light rail in the U.S. Muni is not that far behind. As I’ve pointed out to The Antiplanner, putting VTA service out to bid would be an excellent start on cutting costs, assuming the local politicians could ever eyeball it out with the transit unions.

    About 5%-7% of the proposed budget for the Fremont to San Jose BART project would be sufficient to fully double track the Capitol Corridor commuter rail line between Oakland and San Jose, add a new connection between BART and Capitol Corridor in Fremont, and run Hercules-San Jose trains every 15 minutes during the peak and every 30 minutes at other times. Travel times would be considerably faster than the proposed BART extension, additional operating costs would be 50% less, and likely patronage would be much higher, mainly due to much faster service. Such an enhanced Capitol Corridor would have an excellent chance of breaking even compared to a BART extension underutilized compared to its capacity.

    posted on July 23rd, 2008 at 12:46 pm

  5. 5 On July 23rd, 2008, msetty said:

    To clarify my position on other things, I disagree with The Antiplanner that BART was a mistake. BART failed to meet projections for 250,000 daily boardings in 1975, but by the early 1980′s, it had met the projected number of daily passenger miles. Patronage forecasters erred in assuming a lot of very short trips in the East Bay primarily to and from downtown Oakland. But thanks to the troubles of the 1960′s, downtown Oakland’s economy cratered and this segment of potential BART ridership never materialized.

    It also is not totally accurate to say that “professional transit experts” widely considered the original BART system to be a failure. Most BART critics were folks like Melvin Webber and John F. Kain, folks grossly over-influenced by “free market” ideology and way too enamored of the automobile. To a great degree, such academics had little direct experience “in the trenches” and were not qualified to pontificate on the subject. Nearly 20 years ago, Demery pointed out basic arithmetic errors to Kain that he made in an analysis of Atlanta, but the professor never responded nor corrected his stupid mistakes. My list of academics and engineers who actually made positive contributions to the transit knowledge base include Vukan Vuchic (whose accomplishments alone negates Webber, Kain, and a whole host of other minor figures), Ed Tennyson, Paul Mees in Australia, and to a degree, Bob Cervero (but Bob oversells BRT into higher patronage ranges where LRT makes more sense). There are others, but I don’t want to spend any more time digging for this post.

    As for the “thought experiment” that an extensive express bus system could have taken the place of BART, as someone with 30 years of operating experience mostly with buses, I can strongly assure you that Antiplanner notion is quite wrong. Before BART transbay service opened in 1974, AC Transit’s transbay service peaked with about 50,000 daily riders, requiring a fleet of about 300 buses on top of the 550 or so local East Bay buses. Currently, BART carries more than 150,000 daily transbay passengers, which by extension would require around 800-900 vehicles for this market segment.

    West Bay BART usage within San Francisco would require another 200-300 Muni buses, with similar numbers to carry BART riders within the East Bay. On top of that, several billion dollars worth of bus facilities would have been needed, including exclusive busways and a downtown San Francisco terminal resembling the $2 billion+ Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan. With the additional Muni buses, downtown San Francisco would have been saturated with Muni buses, and The City certainly would not have allowed another 400-500 buses per hour on City street for transbay riders–an offstreet terminal would have been mandatory. Besides with only 300 transbay AC Transit buses in the early 1970′s, the existing Transbay Terminal was THEN nearly at its practical capacity for buses.

    As for losing 140 million annual bus riders in the Bay Area, The Antiplanner needs to document this. The only substantial areas such numbers could have come from would be San Francisco Muni or AC Transit. By my counts, lost ridership for these two systems may be around 40 million annually; Muni has lost perhaps 100,000 daily riders since the 1970′s, and AC Transit perhaps 30,000-40,000 daily, net. AC patronage maxed out at around 270,000 daily in the early 1980′s. For bus ridership losses from other areas outside the BART counties, BART had nothing to do with it except more recently with the previously mentioned Samtrans bus cuts to keep the Airport extension going.

    posted on July 23rd, 2008 at 1:16 pm

  6. 6 On July 23rd, 2008, lgrattan said:

    Attend the presentation for VTA bus rapid-tansit down Santa Clara Street for 128 million. I suggested they make no construction improvements but double the number of busses and run them for free. This should take some cars off the roads and the cost should be less than the interest on the proposed 128 million construction. It was well received.

    posted on July 23rd, 2008 at 1:56 pm

  7. 7 On July 23rd, 2008, Hugh Jardonn said:

    I think that to argue the merits of the existing BART system is a waste of time. Let the academics worry about it because the existing BART will not be going away any time soon, short of its being utterly destroyed in an earthquake. If that happens, we have more important problems.

    The issue at hand is “should VTA raise sales taxes to pay for the BART to SJ extension?” and the answer is a resounding “no.” One idea that’s been discussed is expanding express bus service from BART stations in the East Bay to job sites in the South Bay. This was discussed on the “VTA Watch” blog under an item titled “Extend AC Transit to Silicon Valley.” Given the spread-out nature of Santa Clara County employment and the fact that the proposed BART route misses most of the job locations, expanded express bus networks might be worth considering. Some employers, like Google, already operate their own express buses for their employees, so this isn’t much of a stretch. The NY Times has an interesting on Google’s buses from 2007 titled “Google’s Buses Help Its Workers Beat the Rush.”

    Let’s not waste time discussing the merits of building BART in the 1970s. That ship has sailed.

    posted on July 23rd, 2008 at 2:02 pm

  8. 8 On July 23rd, 2008, Kevyn Miller said:

    Paul Mees? The writer of such works of fiction as The American Heresy?

    posted on July 23rd, 2008 at 6:48 pm

  9. 9 On July 23rd, 2008, msetty said:

    This was discussed on the “VTA Watch” blog under an item titled “Extend AC Transit to Silicon Valley.” Given the spread-out nature of Santa Clara County employment and the fact that the proposed BART route misses most of the job locations, expanded express bus networks might be worth considering.

    The Altamont Commuter Express has an extensive network of shuttle buses connecting its Santa Clara station with various employment locations which works quite well. If Capitol Corridor trains operated more frequently, shuttle bus schedules could be very frequent. This is a better model than a bunch of low productivity express buses that would perform far worse than AC Transit’s current transbay routes to downtown San Francisco.

    Not Paul Mees, the fiction writer, but Paul Mees, the Australian academic who authored what I consider a seminal work on public transit: A Very Public Solution: A Very Public Solution: public transport in the dispersed city, Carlton South, Vic: Melbourne University Press (link to Amazon for this book).

    posted on July 23rd, 2008 at 10:06 pm

  10. 10 On July 24th, 2008, foxmarks said:

    “I advocate bus and rail projects with ridership commensurate with capital costs.”

    What does commensurate mean in the unicorn-filled anti-gravity planner universe? That high ridership speculations merit greater theft from non-riders? If a $2/trip operating subsidy would attract enough users, it would be worth bumping the capital subsidy up from $2 to $3 per trip?

    “VTA and Muni also have a unique talent for inflating operating costs”

    To be uniquely profligate in the plannerverse is quite an accomplishment. Thankfully, Setty is on the scene helping us build excess capacity only where we truly need it. It must be a great feeling being unconstrained by any meaningful price signals.

    “as someone with 30 years of operating experience mostly with buses, I can strongly assure you that Antiplanner notion is quite wrong. Before BART transbay service opened in 1974, AC Transit’s transbay service blah blah masturbation blah blah”

    So comforting that we have such an authority here. Arguing from fact must seem small and tedious to the self-anointed brilliants of the plannerverse.

    Now, I’m not sure if Setty has been caught arguing that an evil preference for highways established a development pattern unfair to communal transit. Those who do subscribe to such a faith cannot join Setty’s circle jerk that BART ridership proves the necessity of Bay Area rail. Put out a big enough subsidy and you’ll attract more riders than buses can handle. Just like handing highways to motorists created an “auto dependence”.

    BART wasn’t a mistake…it just drew fewer riders than projected and cost more than expected. So how much does one have to f*ck up to make a mistake in the plannerverse? Or, are there no mistakes, only insufficient funding contingencies for unanticipated outcomes?

    posted on July 24th, 2008 at 12:25 am

  11. 11 On July 24th, 2008, John Dewey said:

    foxmarks: “So how much does one have to f*ck up to make a mistake in the plannerverse? Or, are there no mistakes, only insufficient funding contingencies for unanticipated outcomes?”

    Good post. Thank you.

    posted on July 24th, 2008 at 4:43 am

  12. 12 On July 24th, 2008, Kevyn Miller said:

    MSetty, Yep, the same Paul Mees, I was referring to this appalling travesty:
    The American Heresy:. Half a century of transport planning in Auckland by Paul Mees and Jago Dodson.
    “In the 1950s, the New Zealand Railways proposed an upgrade of Auckland’s rail system, including electrification and underground CBD loop as well as integration with bus services. The region’s road engineers, inspired by then-contemporary US planning ideals and new road building techniques, proposed an alternative plan for a network of motorways. The Auckland Regional Planning Authority, predecessor to the Auckland Regional Council, appointed a committee (dominated by road engineers) to resolve the issue. The committee’s report (published in 1956) dismissed the rail proposal as unsuited to a dispersed city and adopted the motorway plan.”
    The paper completely ignores the Roading Investigation Committee’s final report (published in 1954) which, while focussing on the needs of the primary sector (mainly farming) recommended that revenue from road users needed to be doubled and in order to gain public acceptance for that the government would have to stop diverting half the petrol tax for general revenue. The government actually did that at the end of 1954. What the government hadn’t told the committe or the public was that it wasn’t spending this money on health and education as it had claimed in 1950 but had in fact been spending the money implementing similar railway improvements in the country’s capital city. The dedication of this revenue to improving farm productivity meant the money for the Auckland railway improvements disappeared. The motorway program had been published in 1946 and construction began in 1950, so it was actually the railway planners who were putting forward an alternative plan, not the road engineers. However, as rural roading needs were considered pre-eminent progress on the motorway plan has hardly been spectacular – 50 miles in 60 years.

    posted on July 24th, 2008 at 5:35 am

  13. 13 On July 26th, 2008, the highwayman said:

    Surprisingly enough even Tom Rubin(a.k.a TAR) has admitted that the elimination of the Key System between SF to Oakland and other points to the east was a mistake.

    Though even BART doesn’t completely replace the Key System. The only thing that I really find dumb about BART was that they built it non standard gauge, which adds to the costs.

    posted on July 26th, 2008 at 7:02 am

  14. 14 On July 29th, 2008, msetty said:

    Foxmarks:

    You’re an idiot. Go contemplate your navel, moron.

    posted on July 29th, 2008 at 8:19 pm

  15. 15 On July 30th, 2008, prk166 said:

    Msetty, what’s wrong? Wake up on the wrong side of the bed? A bad day? I understand that Foxmarks comments are pretty loaded with language. But where does she/he resort to puerile name calling? And if Foxmarks doesn’t, why are you?

    posted on July 30th, 2008 at 7:32 am

  16. 16 On July 30th, 2008, Dan said:

    But where does she/he resort to puerile name calling?

    Please, son. Use your scroll wheel. And the pretense of innocence or ignorance isn’t working.

    BTW, [killfile] is our friend on this site.

    DS

    posted on July 30th, 2008 at 9:18 am

  17. 17 On July 30th, 2008, msetty said:

    Prk166:

    I’ll take your snide remark as meaning you actually have little constructive to say.

    As for Foxmarks, he apparently just likes to be insulting, when also means he also has little of value to say. Such comments as “the unicorn-filled anti-gravity planner universe?” is an idiotic insult, not an argument, revealing more about him than about me.

    Same for his cutsy wording, “Those who do subscribe to such a faith cannot join Setty’s circle jerk that BART ridership proves the necessity of Bay Area rail.” If Foxmarks keeps up this sort of BS, he’s definitely acting like an idiot and moron–but I repeat myself.

    BTW, as Randal and others have pointed out, insulting your enemies may let you let off steam, but it is the opposite of convincing. Like most times I’ve argued with dogmatic libertarians, who think you’re stupid or a liberal granola crunching elitist” or similar if you don’t agree, with the insults and questioning of one’s ancestry becoming more intense if you calmly explain that you understand what they’re saying, but reject their premises based on a different understanding of American values. It really annoys them.

    posted on July 30th, 2008 at 10:23 am

  18. 18 On July 30th, 2008, prk166 said:

    I wasn’t being snide nor ignorant. I just didn’t see what the big deal was. I looked quick but didn’t read-read. I can see how that gets under you skin.

    posted on July 30th, 2008 at 11:19 am

  19. 19 On July 30th, 2008, msetty said:

    I wasn’t being snide nor ignorant. I just didn’t see what the big deal was. I looked quick but didn’t read-read. I can see how that gets under you skin.

    Well, it helps if read the entire thing before commenting, and address the comment to the points being made, rather than using such “charming” wording as “circle jerk.”

    As The Antiplanner would certainly agree, the debate over BART has been a “big thing” in transportation circles for nearly 40 years, and its alleged success or failure is still relevant. That is why I spent some time on the subject–and to point out when the most prominent critics who I think get too much adoration from academics, e.g. John F. Kain and Melvin Webber, and who were just plain wrong on many of their facts and interpretations.

    As for the need to match patronage to capital investment, you’ll understand where I’m coming from more if you take a look at the “traffic density” pages on my website at http://www.publictransit.us. I don’t expect you to agree, but you should understand the basis for my points, since my professional views weren’t formed overnight but rather over 30 years.

    For the record, I also agree with The Antiplanner that the VTA light rail system is the worst performing of new systems, mainly because the patronage and its “traffic density” is so low compared to the nearly $2 billion investment made. By this criteria, most new LRT systems perform far better. But I DON’T agree with The Antiplanner in that I think the VTA system can be fixed and even one or two extensions MAY be justified. But the details of this, mostly technical, would take several pages.

    posted on July 30th, 2008 at 12:17 pm

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