December updates

VTA service changes

VTA will implement a number of service changes early next year. Nearly all the changes were approved by the board earlier in the Spring. A number of commuter express routes will have new hybrid buses with better seating and free wifi. Those include lines 102, 103, 120, 121, 122, 182, and 183. Line 183 will be a new route from the Evergreen/Eastridge area to Fremont BART via Hostetter Light Rail. It is a route requested by VTA's MTC liaison Dave Cortese.

In addition, line 23 will have frequency going from every 12 minutes to every 10 minutes to address the recent overcrowding. Line 22 will have additional trips. Line 16 in Morgan Hill will lose service during the midday hours.

Caltrain

Earlier today the Caltrain board approved a public hearing over possible fare changes. While the details has yet to be released, Caltrain staff is planning to raise the fares on the paper ticket and eliminate the 8-ride ticket for Clipper (while the regular fare for Clipper stay the same). Under that scenario, Caltrain would follow Golden Gate Transit to provide discounts for all Clipper users. The 8-ride ticket is a headache for many Caltrain users. Many riders have to purchase the ticket online, wait a few days to load, and then still have to tag on and off for every ride. If a rider has an 8-ride ticket for zone 1 and 2 but wants to travel to zone 3, that rider can't deduct a ride off the ticket and pay an upgrade, but instead will have to pay a one way fare for the entire trip.

The Clipper implementation is mostly a disaster, but MTC is making transit agencies to do it with the threat of withholding funds.

Besides Clipper, Caltrain is almost completing the station reconstruction at Santa Clara and platform additions in San Jose. At the Santa Clara Caltrain Station, there will be a new center platform for the northbound Caltrain as well as Capitol Corridor and ACE trains operating on the Union Pacific track. When the construction is scheduled to finish sometime later this month, both ACE and Capitol Corridor trains will stop at the new platform, which riders can transfer to the line 10 bus to San Jose Airport.

ACE used to stop at the Santa Clara Station from 2001 to 2005, when Caltrain essentially evicted ACE when it added Baby Bullet service. ACE had to switch to the northbound Caltrain track in order to make a stop at Santa Clara.

SamTrans

Next month, SamTrans will introduce a day pass but will eliminate paper monthly passes. Riders will need to have a Clipper Card to load monthly passes.

Is Podcar another false promise?

Since the concept of a people mover at San Jose Airport was approved with Measure A ten years ago, the project eventually proved to be too expensive to build and operate, not very useful, and ineffective. Nowadays, the city is hosting a Personal Rapid Transit conference, in which PRT proponents are saying that San Jose Airport could have a people mover-like system without the price tag.

PRT, or pod car is a concept that has existed for decades, with the promise of fast, frequent, and non-stop service. Renderings of such systems often feature small cars hanging off a slim elevated track. What PRT doesn't have is a track record of daily revenue service. The PRT proponents are desperately looking for sponsoring cities, along with funding, to prove their concepts.

San Jose politicians are trying to look for a "creative" solution to a superficial problem and while dismissing realistic solutions. The simple way to bring rail to San Jose airport is to extend the light rail system from 1st Street into the airport. Light rail only needs to extend a mile to serve both terminals A and B. Light rail already serves Downtown San Jose and connects with Caltrain, Amtrak, ACE (and possibly BART in Milpitas and high speed rail at Diridon Station). Unlike peoplemover or pod car, no separate maintenance facility is needed for light rail.

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One has to wonder why San Jose is pretending to be progressive on transportation by promoting PRT while actually moving backwards by ignoring light rail. Cities like Portland and Baltimore have light rail located directly at the terminal. Sacramento and Los Angeles are planning to extend their light rail systems to airport as well.

VTA light rail is drawing fewer riders than similar systems in other cities because the light rail lacks destinations that are not convenient to drive. If the light rail can directly serve the airport, it will change how the system is used and perceived. While many people have brought up the idea for many years, it was repeatedly ignored by the City of San Jose and VTA (which the City has a controlling stake on).

While the PRT proponents welcome the attention received in San Jose, it is another loss of opportunity for a more cost effective transportation. Even if the PRT has proven to be a reliable technology, it will still be slower and less convenient for riders than extending light rail directly to the airport. Even if PRT has applications beyond the airport, its proclaimed advantages can easily be met by automobile and bike sharing, along with better bike and ped infrastructures.

Nonsense on BART from Reed and Liccardo

BART is the ingredient that will destroy transit in the Silicon Valley.

San Jose Mercury News printed an op-ed from Chuck Reed and Sam Liccardo, responding to Scott Herhold's column expressing opposition to the BART project.

The op-ed essentially represented SVLG/VTA's view of staying the course on the BART project, when, almost eight years after passing the 2000 Measure A, VTA has constructed nothing and the agency is looking forward to another tax increase.

This op-ed deserves a response.

"Several experts have studied less-costly transit alternatives to BART for this corridor, and, without exception, those studies prove the axiom that "you get what you pay for." If we want more than 100,000 weekday commuters to use transit along that corridor, BART remains the only means - by a wide margin - to that goal."

VTA never truly studied other transit alternatives in the corridor. VTA actually sabotaged MTC's studies that would've considered other transit alternatives in the corridor between Fremont and San Jose. Other agencies in the Central Valley are interested in upgrading ACE into a High Speed Rail like service to San Jose. VTA is actually against these proposals because they compete with BART. On the other hand, BART will not provide direct service from the growing Tri-Valley and Central Valley.

"In fact, the BART extension would carry more riders in this county by 2030 than all of our existing forms of transit today - bus, light rail and Caltrain combined."

In Los Angeles, the Red Line subway carries about 127,000 riders per day, and its bus system carries over a million riders per day. It is a no-brainer to figure out that the BART extension cannot have more riders than all the other services that VTA runs, and our urban environment is more similar to LA.

"Mr. Nakadegawa characterizes the 71 percent fare-box return projection as too ambitious, yet our experience tells us otherwise. Within months of completing the BART extension to San Francisco International Airport, the agency recovered 70 percent of its operating costs through fares."

71% farebox recovery is not realistic. When the BART-SFO extension was proposed, backers of that extension suggested the line would generate a fare surplus. Because of that miscalculation on the farebox recovery, SamTrans almost went bankrupt.

Backers today say 71%, which means more like 40% if it is built. As a transit rider, would you accept fare increases and service reductions to pay for the shortfall? As a taxpayer, would you accept more sales tax increases?

"With several residential high-rises under way now in San Jose's downtown core, and with high-density zoning approved near transit stops in Milpitas, San Jose and Santa Clara, the stations will have a clearly urban character. With or without BART, the future will bring even greater population density."

Although San Jose and Milpitas are building higher density, the density proposed will not generate enough riders, and the density needed to generate enough riders will not receive community support.

Downtown San Jose can only build so high (and therefore so dense) because of the airport conflict. Perhaps SVLG, Reed and Liccardo would have preferred that Ernie Renzel built the airport further away from downtown so that downtown could actually have a real skyline and not having to decide between economic benefits generated by real estate and the airport.

As much as Renzel shortchanged downtown San Jose, SVLG and others are shortchanging transit with BART. If San Jose were visionary, it wouldn't have picked BART to catch up with Oakland. Proposals like Caltrain Metro East are much more visionary, cost less to taxpayers, suitable to the suburban environment, and actually connect to new developments in Central Valley.

Roy Nakadegawa spent decades to improve transportation and he is not beholden to downtown and construction lobby. People like him oppose BART not because they oppose mass transit (which they don't), but because they want a type of mass transit that won't shortchange others.

Is the 2000 Measure A becoming a lost cause?

A quick read over the minutes of the 2000 Measure A Project Advisory Committee meeting on 5/11 reveals a sad future for VTA. The 2000 Measure A is slowly losing its purpose of transporting people and becoming just a list of pork barrel projects for the consultants and the construction industry.

Alum Rock-Santa Clara light rail - VTA is "exploring a modified version of the light rail alternative, which would operate on the eastern side of the corridor on Alum Rock Avenue between Five Wounds Church (Near U.S. 101) and Capitol Avenue/Capitol Expressway with Eastridge as the final destination."

If this alternatives goes through, it would render this light rail project useless for transportation. Currently, two bus routes (64 and 522) operate the entire length of Alum Rock-Santa Clara corridor between Capitol Avenue and Downtown San Jose. This alternative would make transit inferior by either duplicating light rail service with existing bus service, or force passengers to transfer from light rail to bus (or BART) at Five Wounds Church on their way to Downtown San Jose.

The logic for advocating a shortened light rail is clear: The politicians want light rail on the Alum Rock-Santa Clara corridor, but the project is facing diffculty given the restricted street width and the duplication with the BART subway between the Five Wounds Church and Downtown San Jose. VTA and the politicians may want East Valley passengers to transfer from light rail to BART to get to downtown, but with less than two miles from downtown, this idea (along with BART itself) only wastes tax money and creates inconvenience.

San Jose Airport People Mover - VTA is proposing a three-station people-mover system connecting the Santa Clara Caltrain station (proposed BART station), the airport, and the Light Rail station on 1st Street). VTA plans to build it under the airport's runway and would use automated vehicles operating every 3 minutes.

While on the surface it seems like a good idea and it has support from the Airport commission, the details later revealed demostrate the nonviability of the project.

The Airport and VTA are considering a single station at the airport for the people mover. The people mover will not connect the terminals, and it will not connect with the long term parking lots as well as the rental car center.

The 2000 Measure A would only fund the portion between the Santa Clara Caltrain station and the airport. The connection between the airport and the light rail would be funded by the City of San Jose, but the city has yet to commit any funds.

VTA assumes only the capital cost of the people mover project. VTA General Manager Michael Burns stated that "from VTA’s perspective that VTA would not have responsibility for the operations or maintenance costs."

As it is, the proposed airport people mover is an independent subway system from two transit stations with an airport station in between. It will be funded by all airport users and will have no purpose other than getting transit riders to the airport.

While the airport people mover may create jobs for the engineers and planners, this project is simply not viable. The projected ridership (11,500 per day according to VTA) is insufficient to support a rail system. Also, without it to serve other airport facilities like long-term parking and rental car center, the airport would not be able to achieve cost effieciencies (by not having to run buses to these locations) and instead create a huge financial drain. In order to build and operate this, the airport would have to ask the struggling airlines and their passengers to pay for a service that most users would not use.

While these projects would be a windfall for the engineering consultants and the construction industry, the losers will be the everyday transit riders.

Answer to the people mover question: More money for San Jose

In an attempt to squeeze more funding to support the real people mover between the Santa Clara freight yard, where BART is supposed to end, and the San Jose Airport, San Jose official is now suggesting that part of the non-transit portion of the proposed 1/4 cent sales tax could be suspended to support the people mover.

In a way it is a defiance against SVLG, in which it first suggested to provide funding for non-transit expediture as a way to woo voters. If it is true that there's enough funding for pothole repairs, then why include it in the tax if not to mislead voters?

On the other hand, non-San Jose politicians were opposed to this idea. Not as much as whether the funding is needed, but where the money goes. County Supervisor Don Gage said it correctly in the article, "San Jose wants the big chunk.This is all San Jose." Generally, maintenance funding is spread around the county based on population or need; however, the people mover project mostly involve San Jose, therefore there would be a transfer of wealth if this project were funded instead.

Also, it leads to a more frightening prospect that more transfer of wealth could happen if other non-BART/non-San Jose projects have to be scarificed due to BART and/or people mover cost-overruns.

Finally, the City of San Jose could step further up to the plate by using city or airport funds, instead of taking a larger portion of the county sales tax. Or, the City could suggest eliminating the extra extortion fees for BART based on deceptive ridership projection. Or, in the extreme, a 1/4 city-wide sales tax for whatever project San Jose wants.

VTA's deceptive sales tactic

At VTA's Policy Advisory Committee's meeting on October 13, the committee will decide whether to forward the sales tax plan to the entire board.

After the board workshop on September 16, VTA staff tested various scenarios and is now recommending a specific expenditure plan.

VTA's proposed plan follows the SVLG's recommendation, which is a 30-year long 1/4 cent sales tax. The plan includes the following elements

• Build BART to Santa Clara freight yard by 2018. In addition to the sales tax, VTA is also counting on other revenue sources such as transit-oriented development (miniscule compared to the expenditure), reductions in expenditures (as if that has happened before on any BART project), and potential increases in tax revenue that might magically allow BART extension to be built sooner.
• "Phases" in the BART project and the purchase of BART non-standard vehicles. Unlike typical phasing, which the entire line is divided into segments and open for revenue service individually, this so call "phased" service would start with 15-minute peak headways from 2018 to 2030, which by that time, according to VTA, would have 111,500 boardings per day. (By the way, BART stations in downtown San Francisco receive service every 3 minutes to achieve this level of ridership)
• An extra $913 million extortion fee for the BART project because of the new fraudulent ridership projection recently released by VTA, primarily for "vehicles and station parking impacts."
• The next light rail extension currently planned, from Alum Rock to Eastridge, would be built by 2019, one year after BART.
• Based on SVLG's "polling data," a $717 million worth of non-transit expenditures, such as county expressways improvements, is added to support the automobiles, as well as the road building lobby.
• Although funding for Caltrain electrification (San Francisco to San Jose only) and other improvements is included, VTA irrationally cut the overall funding by 10%, per SVLG's recommendation. Unlike all other projects, VTA placed a disclaimer of how to spend the fund if electrification could not be done.
• Pocket changes such as a "gradual VTA service increase of 12.4% by 2015, followed by an increase to 24% in 2020," as well as additional funding for senior/disabled services. These improvements were included in the original 2000 Measure A. Why would anyone believe that another sales tax would help these improvements?

A few items got deferred, primarily based on SVLG's polls and limited funding:

• Light rail along the Santa Clara/Alum Rock corridor.
• Light rail extension from Eastridge to Nieman.
• Caltrain electrification from San Jose to Gilroy
• The real peoplemover to San Jose Airport.

In an attempt to deceive everyone, VTA has included the enhanced bus #10 (free bus service between Santa Clara Caltrain station and the Metro/Airport light rail station through San Jose Airport) as "Phase I of the Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport People Mover Project," in the tax proposal, deliberately removed the key word "bus":

Implements Phase I of the Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport People Mover Project, which would consist of a special premium non-stop service from the Santa Clara BART Station to the airport terminals using unique station elements to differentiate from VTAÂ’s regular service. Estimated operating cost of Phase I is $94 million from 2018 to 2036.

The real peoplemover project is considered by VTA as the "Phase II" and the funding for it is not included in this tax package. This and other deferred projects might receive funding until other projects got their funds or if other funding sources are identified.

VTA's tax plan is uninspired, essentially it is an extortion scheme for BART. Just like fried rice (which you cook with left-over rice), this proposal is a replay of the 2000 Measure A, only lousier. Because the plan has no vision other than the BART extension to Santa Clara freight yard, these transit programs, including the airport people mover, could be sacrificed to support BART and highways with the approval of SVLG, and only SVLG.

VTA insane tax talk heats up

The proposed 1/4 cent sales tax will be the main topic at the upcoming VTA board workshop scheduled this Friday.

In addition to the basic expenditure on assumptions drafted by Gonzales earlier, VTA also evaluated additional assumptions submitted by SV"L"G and the cities in the north county.

In both scenarios submitted by SVLG and the north county, the opening of the BART extension would be delayed for three years to 2018. For the SVLG scenario, the tax would be a temporary tax with a 30 year life, whereas in other scenarios would be permanent. In the case of the north county scenario, the reason for the 3 year delay is to use the extra funds to support Caltrain electrification sooner.

The SVLG version would fund roads and bicycle program, and would eliminate funds for the Downtown-East Valley light rail, along with cutting funds for Caltrain electrification arbitrarily by 10%. The reason for cutting light rail and reduce funding for Caltrain electrification is that these projects don't poll well according to SVLG. SVLG also recommended a 30 year life, rather than a permanent tax, for the same reason.

Caltrain electrification

SVLG underestimated the benefits Caltrain electrificiation, and arbitrarily splited Caltrain station and service improvements (which polled better according to SVLG) from electrification. Currently Caltrain is studying to replace the entire passenger fleet, which most of the vehicles are 20 years old, with new low floor vehicles. The new vehicles would enhance accessibility for the disabled, decrease dwell time, and further improve acceleration.

If a total fleet replacement is to be considered as a waste for Caltrain, wouldn't the total fleet replacement for light rail be a waste as well? VTA replaced its 15-year-old high floor fleet two years ago, with low floor vehicles that, other than improved accessibility, deliver no additional improvements.

Why didn't SVLG arbitrarily split BART into segments (say to Milpitas and then downtown San Jose)? Would one of the segments poll better than the other?

Downtown-East Valley

This is a comment made by the City of San Jose (included in the VTA workshop packet) that demostrated the city's lack of knowledge in transportation:

The Mayor asked for both full and partial light rail options to be brought forward. That means single car light rail all the way down Alum Rock and Santa Clara streets and single car and multi-car light rail down Alum Rock to stop at the BART station at Alum Rock with passengers going down Santa Clara Street to change to bus rapid transit at the Alum Rock Station.

Similarly, bus passengers going up Santa Clara who want to proceed up Alum Rock would change to light rail. The mayor wants the full range of options considered and not just bus rapid transit or single car light rail all the way up or down Santa Clara and Alum Rock. Only then will the San Jose members be in a position to sort out the best option the area.

VTA did not study a light rail extension from Capitol Avenue to 28th Avenue and shouldn't be. Today, passengers riding along that corridor between downtown and East San Jose have a one-seat ride. Building light rail to 28th Avenue means that these passengers would have to transfer between vehicles. Although passengers from the east to downtown could transfer to BART (as Gonzales and SVLG would want them to) for a rail-only trip, most passengers won't because of the high cost involved, along with the inconvenience of walking to and from the subway stop for otherwise a 10-minute bus ride.

If they support BART because it would eliminate a transfer for some out-of-county residents, why would they support a half-ass light rail extension that would add a transfer for in-county residents along the most utilized transit corridor?

San Jose Airport People Mover

Yoriko Kishimoto of the Palo Alto City Council asked about the People Mover, and VTA responded that the project is currently under study. Despite all the promises of a people mover today, the reality is that the project won't go anywhere.

San Jose voters approved a measure in March 2003 that allowed the airport to expand without the people mover to the light rail station on North First Street. The people mover was included in the original expansion as a way to mitigate the anticipated increase of airport traffic: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/01.16.03/expansion-0303.html

The expansion of the people mover to the other side of the airport is more expensive and complex than to go to the light rail on North First Street. Although having the people mover going under the runway (rather than going around) would shorten the trip time significantly, it seems rather unlikely due to the security sensitivities after 9/11. Also, we don't know who is going to pay for the operating cost of the people mover.

The likely case is that passenger from BART, just like Caltrain and light rail passengers, would have to take bus #10 to get to the airport, even with an extra 1/4 cent sales tax.