The past twenty years have seen a steady decline in local transit service for San Jose. The VTA’s ridership has dropped by nearly 20% since 2009, while transit speeds have also declined by a similar amount over the past 30 years. Slowing transit speeds contribute to the VTA’s rapidly expanding operating budget, as slower service requires more buses and trains just to maintain existing service levels. The unholy trinity of slower speeds, expanding budget deficits and declining ridership complete a self-reinforcing cycle of decline for the VTA.
This downward spiral is exceptionally worrisome in the context of California’s ambitious climate change goals. Transportation accounts for 41% of the State’s carbon emissions, and California’s auto-centric culture threatens to derail its laudable emissions reduction targets. The proliferation of resource-intensive electric vehicles alone won’t save us; Californians need to start cutting down on our addiction to driving- a task made more complicated by the public’s unfounded fear of coronavirus spread on transit. Such a drastic change in our habits will never transpire unless transit agencies, the VTA included, can make transit a faster and cheaper alternative to driving. Recently, the VTA board passed a climate emergency declaration which reasserted the agency’s commitment to lowering San Jose’s greenhouse gas emissions. It’s up to the agency to live up to that promise.
Given the agency’s precarious financial situation- no doubt worsened by the coronavirus pandemic- it is essential that the VTA reassess some of its largest capital investments, including Phase 2 of the BART to San Jose extension and the Eastridge light rail extension, and focus on low-cost alternatives to speed local transit.
The Eastridge light rail extension is expected to cost $599 million dollars to complete and a whopping $720,000 to operate per rider, only to attract a paltry 611 patrons. However, the political will of the major players in the County is behind this project, making it unlikely that changes will be made. However, the VTA and San Jose should at least promote transit oriented development in order to attract even a slightly significant rider base to justify the extension.
Regarding BART to San Jose, the extension to Santa Clara stands out as an exceptionally gross waste of funds. The extension to Santa Clara would spend hundreds of millions of dollars merely to duplicate existing- and rapidly expanding- Caltrain service. One of the justifications given for the Santa Clara extension is the creation of an adjacent maintenance facility. However, a similar facility- mentioned in the project’s environmental documents- could be built at a significantly lower cost at Las Plumas in Berryessa. Savings could instead be reinvested into building back declining bus networks.
The most significant- and cost-effective- strategy the VTA can employ is the creation of quick-build transit infrastructure, such as queue jumps, signal priority, bus lanes and bus boarding islands which have helped to spur large ridership increases in cities such as Seattle. Larger transit speed improvement projects, such as the proposed El Camino busway have often withered under local opposition. Instead, the VTA ought to expedite smaller projects, such as those mentioned in the Complete Streets Program using State legislation such as SB 288, currently in committee, to speed deployment of critical improvements.
Of course, boiling the VTA’s woes down to a single issue would be futile. The agency- like Bay Area transit as a whole- suffers from chronically ineffective governance and is plagued by the same woes as other transit agencies in the age of ride-hailing. However, one thing is for sure. If the VTA fails to reconsider its investments and improve transit where it counts, then the promises of decades of transit taxes will amount to nothing but a cruel joke.Thanks for reading. The next post will be on on-demand transit, and from there I'll post a few stories on vexillology, and what it means to defund the police. Follow me on twitter at @personopolis.
Signing off,
AG
Comments
Post a Comment