Image by Wikimedia Commons
VTA helped thwart a state legislative initiative to bail out BART this Spring, while moving forward with a costly plan to extend BART service through SJ. This inconsistency raises the possibility that future SJ residents will be walking atop a white elephant running under East Santa Clara Street. The unstoppable Marc Joffe explores in another Opp Now exclusive.
Even assuming that BART is financially healthy when service is expected to start in 2039, ridership could be very limited. Although VTA still shows an outdated estimate of 54,600 weekday riders on its project website, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) website reflects the most recent estimate of 32,900, which was derived from the latest (pre-COVID) modeling data.
And ridership models often miss on the high side. Recently, we have seen disappointing ridership on Honolulu’s Skyline and San Francisco’s Central Subway. Even more pertinently, KPIX reported last year that utilization of BART’s Millbrae and Berryessa stations (which make up Phase I of the Silicon Valley extension) was running 90 percent below expectations.
In response to the low ridership at these stations, BART reduced frequency from eight to six trains per hour (and only three during evening hours) so that it could invest more heavily in its Yellow Line service that runs through central Contra Costa County.
But the latest FTA ridership model assumes ten hourly departures. Whether BART can establish this level of service or even maintain its current level of six hourly trains will depend on its financial status.
Right now, BART is rapidly exhausting emergency state and federal aid it received to offset lost farebox revenue from COVID and the shift to remote work. After 2026, the agency could face annual deficits of $300 million or more if a new source of revenue is not found.
State Senators Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward) hoped to throw BART a lifeline with their SB 1031, a bill that would have authorized a 2026 Bay Area-wide ballot measure to impose a new regional transit tax.
But VTA opposed the bill, which has now been shelved until next year. VTA and its supporters did not like the fact that taxes raised under the ballot measure could be redistributed from Santa Clara County to other less affluent counties to the north. While VTA does not mind taxing residents for transit, it prefers to keep the money for itself.
Further, VTA did not like some of the transit consolidation language in the SB 1031 which was championed by the advocacy group Seamless Bay Area. Under the bill, funds from the new tax would have been administered by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission which would have also studied the possibility of consolidating some of the Bay Area’s 27 transportation agencies.
While VTA board and senior staff might not like consolidation, it could be a win for both taxpayers (who would no longer be obliged to fund redundant transit bureaucracies) and passengers (who might see better coordination across systems such as more reliable timed transfers).
During the San Jose extension’s very long build phase, VTA may be doing the right thing from a public choice perspective: get billions of federal and local funds for construction while not ceding control of annual operating funds. But from the perspective of Bay Area transit’s long-term well-being, VTA is taking a big risk: connecting to a BART system that may have been hollowed out by budget cuts. If the BART of 2039 is offering infrequent, unreliable service on dirty, dangerous trains and stations, even fewer riders will use VTA’s shiny new San Jose extension.
From the taxpayer’s perspective, of course, the right answer is to shelve the extension or downsize it to fewer stations. Even if BART could somehow carry the hoped for 32,900 weekday passengers through the four new stations, which is hardly worth the $12.75 billion VTA is now spending.
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