☆ Opinion: BART's driving off a cliff with latest extension proposal

Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility's VP Rich Crowley once served on a Bay Area transportation work group. He here advises from his experience with BART's inflexible system, mismanaged funds, and evolving cultural work trends: Extending through DTSJ to Santa Clara will further clean out residents' wallets—without an adequate payoff. An Opp Now exclusive.

If we continue to have the same governance we now have with VTA, no expansion of BART in San Jose makes any sense.

I served on the Transportation 2000 work group back in the '80s, and the biggest problem we ran into was that Heavy Rail systems (A.K.A. BART) as designed are very inflexible. For instance, once a rail system is approved, the only way it can be effectively used is if the public believes it will get them to their destination faster and safer than by driving. If it won’t do both, then it’s just a massive waste of taxpayer dollars, and people won’t use it.

Fact is: Less people are riding the VTA (and BART) systems these days. Our whole economy has changed due to Covid, whether it’s because of the new work at home revolution or the fact that many independent contractors can't take public transit because their work site may change daily. For instance, in the service sector, workers who care for yards, home repairs and maintenance, etc. must also transport tools and equipment that don’t travel well on public transit. Consequently, sinking billions of dollars into fixed rail doesn’t make logical sense.

In addition, we can’t ignore the fact that VTA (in charge of bringing BART to Downtown SJ and Santa Clara) is known as one of the poorest performing transit systems in the nation. It has never fully met its basic responsibility of getting people from home to work and then back again, in a reasonable period of time. VTA just hasn't figured out how to do that. Yet in the meantime, we have BART speeding down the track toward sure bankruptcy in just a few years, anxious to add more communities to help pay for its mismanagement. What a partnership! In contrast, we now see buses provided by companies up the Peninsula on our streets. These vehicles are more flexible and efficient; they get people to their jobs while providing Internet so passengers can work during the trip.

Fare box revenue is also a real concern because every dollar collected there reduces operating losses that must be made up by all of us who live in this valley. Back in the late '80s, when I served on the county's Transportation Commission, our target was to have a fair box return of about 30%. Well, before Covid (in 2019), VTA had a great month if their fare box return reached 10%. This tells you that the system isn't attracting people, because it doesn't go where people want to go, and it doesn't exercise flexibility to correct this problem.

If you look at the history of what it's cost us to build these monstrosities, coupled with VTA's mismanagement over the years, it's apparent that we've been throwing money at a failed system run by politicians who focus more on their personal status than serving the needs of the people. We may as well burn those dollars in the fireplace to heat our homes rather than throwing them into failed government systems over and over again.

We need transportation options that people actually use because we are all well served when the government works for our best interests. We all need to take stock of and hold politicians accountable for using our dollars to provide basic transportation services. To do this, we need to have members of the public intimately involved in monitoring every dollar spent by the government through groups like the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury. Finally, we need to pay attention to what politicians say they are going to do for us and vote them out of office if they don’t. Transportation is a key quality of life issue because it provides us with a critical link between home, work and leisure. It’s up to you to vote for responsible use of your tax dollars!

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Image by Richard Masoner