San Jose’s Valley Transportation Authority–a perennial contender for the title of the nation’s worst-managed transit agency–is building a bus-rapid transit line, and it is proving as much of a disaster as some of its light-rail lines. It was supposed to open two months ago, but now appears that it won’t open until 2017. Torn-up streets are damaging businesses along the route, and VTA is having to pay them compensation, making the project far more expensive than expected.
The problems have gotten so bad that the chair of VTA’s board, Perry Woodward, has written a highly defensive op ed not to apologize to taxpayers but to argue that the damage done by this project to the local neighborhood has been more than made up for by all the good things VTA has done in the last twenty years.
What good things? Santa Clara County taxpayers voted to tax themselves to relieve congestion by building more roads, and they proved that you can, after all, build your way out of congestion: congestion levels declined for several years despite a rapid increase in local jobs. But then the county made the mistake of merging its congestion management authority with its transit agency, and pretty soon the transit agency stole all the congestion relief money to fund its expensive projects. The result has been some of the nation’s emptiest light-rail trains (an average of 18 passengers per car vs. a national average of 24) and rapidly rising congestion.
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San Jose’s clumsy attempt to build exclusive bus lanes is just more evidence that, in most cases, bus-rapid transit only makes sense if the buses share lanes with other vehicles. Based on construction costs alone, bus-rapid transit lanes seem cheap compared with light rail: in this case, about $16 million a mile compared with light rail costs that often average $200 million a mile. But the bus lanes take up space that could be used by other traffic, and except in rare circumstances they don’t take anywhere near enough cars off the road to make up for that lost road space.
Now VTA wants taxpayers to give it even more money to fund its expensive and poorly managed operations. While VTA has probably lost its title of worst-managed transit agency to Washington’s Metro system, that’s more because of Washington’s rapid decline than any improvement in San Jose. Perhaps taxpayers will have wised up and will put an end to VTA’s endless hunger for money to feed its inefficient system.
“What good things? Santa Clara County taxpayers voted to tax themselves to relieve congestion by building more roads, and they proved that you can, after all, build your way out of congestion: congestion levels declined for several years despite a rapid increase in local jobs. ”
And/or, you could bring in workers by worker bus. Employees begin at a disparate number of locations, but as they travel towards work, they end up on the same few roads, and moving in the same direction & at the same time. They cause congestion, but without benefit to themselves or the local community.
“But the bus lanes take up space that could be used by other traffic, and except in rare circumstances they don’t take anywhere near enough cars off the road to make up for that lost road space.”
It’s the capacity for cars at the stop lines that makes the difference, not the amount of ‘space’ further back.
And, despite this Cluster****, VTA is planning to convert an existing traffic lane on El Camino Real, a busy arterial, into a BRT-only lane. Removing existing traffic lanes and replacing them with dedicated bus lanes will increase vehicle emissions by increasing motor vehicle congestion and encouraging drivers to divert onto local side streets. Excessive traffic on local side streets will irritate residents who will pressure cities into erecting traffic barriers which will force the traffic back onto a 2-lane El Camino which will no longer be able to adequately handle the traffic. Thus, if a lane is removed from El Camino, congestion will increase as cities take measures to discourage alternative routes.
VTA believes that people taking longer trips will use large roads, not neighborhood streets, or freeways like US101 or I-280. However, traffic congestion has become very bad in Santa Clara County in recent years and the major roads, expressways and freeways are now all congested. Adding more traffic to these roads will just make this congestion worse and increase emissions.
On its web page, VTA dismissed the sentiment that “the cities along the El Camino Real corridor voted down the project but VTA will not take no for an answer” as a myth while admitting that “some cities opposed a design option that included dedicated lanes, not the project in its entirety, which helped shape the scope of the environmental analysis currently underway.” VTA staff needs to realize that most members of the general public are not aware of the arcane points of environmental studies. Thus when a city opposes dedicated lanes and yet the concept returns shortly thereafter, it appears to a lay person that VTA is not taking “no” for an answer. Rightly or wrongly, this reinforces the “myth” that VTA will do whatever it wants on El Camino.
Finally, the “center lane” proposal does not make sense from a transit rider’s point of view. Many bus riders are taking medium-length trips on El Camino (or the Alameda/Santa Clara in SJ) and can use either the 22 or 522. They just take whatever one shows up first since waiting for the faster 522 does not make sense if you factor in the increased wait time. If you separate these routes by moving the 522 to the middle lane, you negate this convenience and open up a possible unsafe situation as people jaywalk between curbside and center-lane bus stops depending on which bus comes along first. If there’s going to be a dedicated bus lane, it should be the curb lane so that all buses stop at the “express” stops and riders have the option of boarding the first bus that comes along.
As well as company buses how about getting Uber or Lyft similar services to let commuters pick up multiple fares on a route they commute on. I can imagine employees of a firm picking up others near where they live and dropping them at their communal work place. This would be a hybrid system between a van pool and conventional bus. It also solves the problem of transit having to provide two shifts for morning and evening commute. Unfortunately the first rule of transit operators is to maintain their monopoly and they will oppose a plan like this vigorously.
If you’re wondering what the Antiplanner is talking about he’s discussed San Jose’s miracle feat of freeway-building in more detail here.
While he makes it sound like the road building binge was cheap and painless, it was actually accomplished at enormous expense and over heated resistance from nearby towns. The 12-mile West Valley Freeway between the Almaden Expressway and I-280, for example, cost nearly a billion dollars in 1994 and was bitterly fought by nearby residents. The towns of Los Gatos and Saratoga successfully blocked any freeway exits within their borders, got trucks banned, and forced the freeway to be built below-grade at great expense. Now Cupertino and Saratoga are fighting toll lanes on the freeway.
From reading the Antiplanner you might be excused for thinking that Santa Clara County simply stopped building or expanding roads after VTA usurped the funds in 1995, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact highway expansion has continued apace at a cost of billions.
The results of all this expensive roadbuilding weren’t exactly the blinding success the Antiplanner implies. Daily peak hour commuter delays rose slowly through the 90’s and then resumed their rapid rise so that by 2014 they were 250% higher (or about 48 hours a year per person) than they were in 1985. In 2015 San Jose ranks as the fifth worst city for auto commuters.
@Ohai, share with the readers those numbers for 1980, 1970, 1960, 1950 so they can see the difference lane miles keeping up with VMT makes or doesn’t make for themselves.
@prk166 The numbers the Antiplanner cited only go back as far as 1985 and his post was specifically about the period from 1989-1997. Feel free to enlighten us, though.