The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) is “one of the most expensive and least efficient transit systems in the country,” says a report issued yesterday by the Santa Clara County (San Jose) Grand Jury. “Empty or near-empty buses and light rail trains clog the County’s streets,” the agency “veers from one financial crisis to another,” and it is intent on building more light rail even though ridership is declining and “experts have pronounced the early twentieth century concept of light rail transit obsolete.”
Back in 2007, the Antiplanner declared that VTA was the “worst transit agency of the decade.” Since then, says the Grand Jury, “VTA’s operating performance has continued to deteriorate.” This isn’t helped by the fact that VTA is pouring billions of dollars into a BART line to San Jose that one of the agency’s own board members says “is going to bankrupt VTA.” Nor is it helped by the fact that the last proposed light-rail extension is expected to cost $183 million a mile and is predicted by VTA to carry so few riders that each new riders will cost $720,000.
The Grand Jury says that part of the problem is that its board is made up of members of the Santa Clara County board, and city commissioners from San Jose and other cities in the county. These elected officials don’t have time to oversee VTA along with everything else they do, leading VTA to become a “staff-driven organization.”
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The Grand Jury’s other recommendations are similarly lame. One is that all board members should attend an “intensive, multi-session on-boarding bootcamp” about VTA’s operations. But since that bootcamp would probably be run by VTA’s staff, that would still leave VTA as a staff-driven organization. Another is that directors should be “to attend, at VTA’s expense, third- party sponsored industry conferences and educational seminars.” But most such conferences are sponsored by the American Public Transportation Association, which is far from an unbiased source of information.
While VTA may be the worst, what’s wrong with VTA is also wrong with the rest of the transit industry. It will take more than board-member training to fix these problems.
I suggest the Grand Jury do something else entirely. I suggest they indict the VTA and all its board members for racketeering, profiteering, and corrupt back-room deals.
Anything that quotes The Antiplanner has dubious credibility at best.
And Metrosucky, g.f.y.
msetty,
when did you stop beating your boyfriend?
I think that the discussion on the way the directors are chosen sort of misses the point. I don’t think it matters that much how the directors are chosen. Change my mind.
However, the grand jury is onto something when it writes “Despite the serious ongoing structural financial deficit, the VTA Board has been unwilling to review and reconsider decisions made years or even decades ago regarding large capital projects (and their attendant operating costs) that are no longer technologically sound or financially viable, based on their costs and projected ridership.”
Based on current ridership projections, the Eastridge extension is questionable. This is especially true if you consider that it duplicates the existing Rapid 522 service.
An even bigger waste of money, which the grand jury ignored is the extension of the multi-billion dollar BART line from the San Jose to the Santa Clara Caltrain stations. This would duplicate existing Caltrain service and the 22/522 buses from San Jose to Santa Clara. This just reinforces the common impression that big ticket transit projects are a waste of money.
Apologies for repetition, but as I have mentioned before in 1999 I took a day tour for city planners hosted by the Silicon Manufacturers Association. It featured housing next to the light rail line, and we got a day pass to use the light rail line. I got into a heated discussion with the host, I recall the president of the Silicon Manufacturers Association. He kept using highly creative statistics such as “a person living withing a half mile of a light rail line takes transit four times as often as the average for the county.” To this I would reply “which is 0.2% of those who otherwise would have driven, so negligible in decreasing traffic.” Finally exasperated he said “but you cannot build high density housing unless it is next to transit.” Therefore I suspect that many of the TVA board know full well that the light rail is not cost effective. It simply allows them to convince neighborhoods to allow them to build high density housing because it is “smart growth” next to transit. This appears to be the strategy of the Metropolitan Transport Association in their plans for the Bay Area.
Interestingly there is no public support for expanding the urban limit line even though most people I have talked to don’t know just how much open space there is in the Bay Area.
And for those of you following this developing story, the SJ Mercury picked it up this morning:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/21/scathing-grand-jury-report-blasts-vta-as-most-expensive-and-least-efficient-transit-system-in-country/
Noteworthy comment: “Cindy Chavez doesn’t apologize for VTA’s excessive costs because she knows SVLG will sponsor yet another regressive sales tax to keep the cash flowing. Time for voters to reject a few rounds of sales tax increases to send a strong message.”
I respond “better late than never.”
Good for them. Definitely better late than never. But in an area where a janitor can hide in the broom closet for months or years and draw overtime and not be discovered, I don’t have much hope that anyone is going to be too angry about corrupt spending on toy trains.
@msetty, why do you condone using sexist phrases like “…getting panties in a bunch”? Clean up your own filth before you worry about others.
If a small businessman filed false statements to get taxpayer $$, he would be sent to federal prison.
Just because the VTA is quasi-governmental does not give them a right to defraud the governments and taxpayers.