The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), which some consider the nation’s worst-managed transit agency, has a new program called Envision Silicon Valley. Despite the grandiose title, the not-so-hidden agenda is to impose a sales tax for transit.
A nearly-empty VTA light-rail car in Sunnyvale.
Any vision of Silicon Valley that starts out with transit is the wrong one. Except to the taxpayers who have to pay for it and the motorists and pedestrians who have to dodge light-rail cars, transit is practically irrelevant in San Jose.
In 2013, San Jose transit carried just 0.8 percent as many passenger miles as were moved on highways and streets in the San Jose urban area. Transit carried 4.6 percent of commuters to work. Among workers who live in households with no cars, more than twice as many drove alone to work (possibly in cars supplied by employers) than took transit to work.
VTA transit ridership peaked at about 58 million trips in 2000, and the agency still has not recovered from the dot-com crash. Because the agency was heavily in debt from building light rail, it was forced to make severe service cuts and by 2005 it had lost more than a third of its riders, a drop to 38 million that is only partly explained by the 15 percent decline in employment. Employment has since recovered, but at 44 million trips ridership in 2013 was still almost a quarter less than in 2000.
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VTA’s light-rail system is one of the poorest performers in the country, earning just 13.8 cents for every dollar of operating costs. Dallas does slightly worse at 13.5 cents but only the Norfolk light rail does significantly worse at 6 cents per dollar. San Diego’s, by comparison, collects more than 53 cents in fares per dollar of operating cost. San Jose light rail attracts fewer riders per route mile than any light-rail system other than Cleveland’s, and less than a third as many as Los Angeles’ light rail and a fifth as many as San Francisco’s.
VTA’s light-rail problems won’t be solved by throwing money at them. San Jose is just not suited for big-box transit like light rail. The problem isn’t the region’s low population density: Silicon Valley is actually the third-densest urban area in the United States (after Los Angeles and San Francisco-Oakland). The problem is the job density: where San Francisco has nearly 300,000 downtown jobs, San Jose has just 31,000. More than 95 of San Jose’s jobs are thinly spread out over the region, and that’s not a recipe for a successful rail transit system.
Unfortunately, VTA has two jobs: it is both Silicon Valley’s transit agency and its congestion-management agency. In 1990, the California legislature required all counties to create congestion-management agencies that would decide how to spend money to reduce congestion, and in 1995 Santa Clara County made the mistake of giving that job to VTA. As the Antiplanner documented in a paper several years ago, this created a conflict of interest: while the best way to reduce congestion was through road improvements, the best way for VTA to increase its budget was to spend congestion-relief funds on transit.
In 1984, San Jose voters had agreed to a sales tax increase to build more roads. While the Antiplanner thinks roads should be built with user fees, there is no doubt that the new roads built with this sales tax greatly improved the region. As the Texas Transportation Institute has documented, between 1989 and 1997, the region gained more than 175,000 new commuters yet traffic delays faced by the average commuter declined by 16 percent.
After VTA was given the congestion management job, however, it connived to have first half and later all of the highway sales tax rededicated to its light-rail construction programs. The result was that by 2006 congestion per commuter had grown by 40 percent.
The Antiplanner thinks envisioning programs are highly deceptive because no one knows what the future will bring. But we have a pretty good idea that the dominant transportation mode in Silicon Valley’s future will be self-driving cars, not transit. Santa Clara County should take congestion-management duties away from VTA, and VTA should figure out how to provide efficient transportation using buses rather than expensive light rail.
“But we have a pretty good idea that the dominant transportation mode in Silicon Valley’s future will be self-driving cars, not transit. ”
I’m not sure who the ‘we’ is, because it certainly doesn’t include me. Once you’ve added features to cars which get the low-hanging fruit, things like cruise control and lane keeping for the freeways, what do expensive self-driving gizmos add to anything?
Also, is it not possible to have a more positive approach to transit? As long as you bring enough car drivers together at a point, then it is possible to reduce congestion by moving them onto a point-to-point bus link. Even if it doesn’t turn into light rail.
“I’m not sure who the ‘we’ is”
Elon Musk for one. The history of microprocessors in cars for two. Many more available using Google.
I strongly oppose another sales tax increase. The proponents are hoping to sucker those of modest means into raising their taxes once again, despite the fact that Santa Clara County’s voters have already done so multiple times. Over the last several elections, voters in this county have passed multiple tax and fee increases and we’re on the hook to pay back numerous state bond issues.
All of this nickel and diming has contributed into making the Bay Area a horribly expensive place to live; especially for people of modest means, who must pay the greatest percentage of their income in these regressive taxes and fees. Each increase by itself does not amount to much, say a half-cent, but the cumulative effect is to add to the unaffordability of the region.
Before increasing taxes YET AGAIN, waste needs to be removed from transportation projects. For example, VTA needs to eliminate waste and “gold plating” of the BART extension’s cost by reducing the scope to eliminate duplicate facilities. For example, we need to eliminate the duplicative and wasteful section between the San Jose and Santa Clara Caltrain stations. This section would duplicate both the existing Caltrain line and VTA’s 22 and 522 buses to a station that has about 1000 riders on the average weekday. This is extremely wasteful and sends the wrong message to voters who will be asked to approve more sales tax increases in 2016. This is extremely insulting considering recent voter approval of all the taxes/fees listed above.
Why don’t the wealthy high-rolling crony capitalists in Carl Guardino’s grossly misnamed “Silicon Valley Leadership Group” suggest taxing their rich companies that create the congestion, and leave the little guy alone for a change?
Maybe the Antiplanner should read his own source. By almost every measure traffic San Jose traffic congestion got worse from 1989 to 1997:
Congested Travel (% of peak VMT): 57% to 60%
Congested System (% of lane-miles): 40% to 48%
Excess Fuel Consumed (1000s gal): 18,144 to 19,773
Total Delay (1000s of person-hours): 48,288 to 46,987 (went up to 51,985, and then 59,964 in the two following years) Maybe this is why the AP made the rather peculiar choice of comparing 1989 with 1997?
Congestion cost per peak auto commuter: $755 to $816
To be fair, San Jose’s congestion rankings did improve relative to other cities. But the numbers don’t really provide any evidence to support the Antiplanner’s claim that, “there is no doubt that the new roads built with this sales tax greatly improved the region.”
Freeway lane miles increased about 25% from 1989 to 1997 (only an 11% increase if you include arterials) but public transportation passenger-miles also increased by over 30% and unlinked passenger trips increased by 23%. Who’s to say that the increased public transportation usage didn’t play as big a role as the road building?
“Freeway lane miles increased about 25% from 1989 to 1997 (only an 11% increase if you include arterials) but public transportation passenger-miles also increased by over 30% and unlinked passenger trips increased by 23%. Who’s to say that the increased public transportation usage didn’t play as big a role as the road building?”
Public transport had a 30% increase of about their about 0.8% market share, or their share went up to something similar to (0.8% x 30% increase in this share=) 1.04%. So public transport is negligible in terms of passenger miles traveled congestion reduction.
In 1999 I went on a tour of “affordable housing” hosted by the Silicon Valley Manufacturers association. It was attend mostly by Bay area planners who were easily convinced that light rail was great and a housing along its lines worked well. I exasperated the host, the chair of the Silicon Valley Manufacturers association, by pointing out that light rail was resulting in a 0.2% decrease in driving. He kept coming back to me with very carefully contrived statistics such as “someone living within a half mile of light rail takes transit three times more frequently than the average for the county” which I would then point out is 0.2% of total trips. Finally, exasperated, he said “but you can’t build high density housing unless it is next to light rail!”. So it appeared the emphasis on light rail and “smart growth” may have just been an excuse to build high density housing along the light rail lines. Actual ridership of the light rail didn’t matter providing it allowed high density housing to be built.
Oh, absolutely, Paul. They have openly admitted it:
“-Light rail “is not worth the cost if you’re just looking at transit” says top Metro growth planner John Fregonese. “It’s a way to develop your community to higher densities.””
( Quoted from http://www.ti.org/FS6.html )