Another Billion-Dollar Boondoggle for San Jose

San Jose’s transit system is a mess, partly because the region decided to spend billions on light rail even though it is completely unsuited for such transportation. But in addition, the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) is simply poorly managed. For example, in 2021 the agency spent $249 per mile operating buses and $536 per vehicle-mile operating light rail, when the national averages are only $158 for buses and $389 for light rail.

In 2019, fares paid by VTA riders covered just 9.1 percent of the agency’s costs. As if that wasn’t pathetic enough, by 2021, this had fallen to 3.4 percent. At the same time, the share of Silicon Valley workers taking transit to work fell from 4.8 percent to 1.1 percent. More Silicon Valley residents who live in households without cars drive alone to work than all of the ones who take transit to work.

Instead of cutting costs, VTA and other California transit agencies are busy lobbying the state legislature to bail them out after they run out of federal COVID relief funds. As long as agencies like VTA know they can count on such bailouts simply by murmuring “fiscal cliff,” they have no incentive to make their operations more efficient.

Despite the utter failure of rail transit in San Jose, someone is now proposing to build a pod-car operation between the San Jose airport and its train station. They estimate the cost for the 3.5-mile line will be $500 million, so of course it will be more than a billion. Since hardly anyone is riding CalTrains to San Jose anymore, there won’t be much demand for the pod cars.

If San Jose decides to build this, it will probably open about the time that Cruise, Waymo, and other robotaxi companies get the bugs out of their San Francisco operations and extend them down to San Jose. Say what you will about the robotaxi pioneers, at least they aren’t demanding hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidies.