☆ Reinventing Silicon Valley transit for the 21st century
VTA stumbles forward to waste billions more on its misbegotten extension of BART to downtown SJ—and beyond. Randal O'Toole, transportation and land-use policy analyst for the Thoreau Institute, has another idea: how about a system based on actual usage patterns of Valley residents and a concern for speed, service, and efficiency? An Opp Now exclusive.
Light rail has failed miserably in Silicon Valley. Santa Clara County buses carried more than 38 million riders in 1986, before any light-rail lines were built. In 2019, after spending well over $3 billion (in today’s dollars) building 40 miles of rail routes, VTA buses and light rail together carried fewer than 36 million riders. Considering the region’s population grew by 32 percent in that time, building rail reduced per capita ridership by almost 30 percent.
Rail never made sense for Silicon Valley. Rail was designed for a time when most jobs were in downtowns, most urban residents lived in dense neighborhoods surrounding those downtowns, and few of those residents owned cars.
Today, less than 4 percent of jobs in the San Jose urban area are in downtown San Jose, residents are spread out over almost 300 square miles of land, and almost everyone has access to an automobile. In fact, more than 92 percent of households in the San Jose urban area have at least one automobile, and more than 40 percent of workers who don’t have cars nevertheless drive alone to work in vehicles supplied by their employers, while less than 14 percent take transit.
Before the pandemic, 10 percent of downtown workers commuted by transit, but less than 4 percent of workers in the rest of the region relied on transit. Even 10 percent isn’t very good—transit’s share of downtown San Francisco commuters was more than 50 percent, and downtown Seattle’s was more than 40 percent—but VTA’s system was almost completely failing workers outside of downtown.
A successful transit system has to serve economic centers throughout Silicon Valley as well as it serves downtown San Jose. Three light-rail lines and well over a dozen bus routes radiate away from downtown San Jose. Other major employment centers, such as the Apple, Google, and Hewlett-Packard campuses, typically have only two bus routes pass them by, which means most people in the region will have to take two or three slow buses to get to those centers.
A viable transit system also has to be able to compete with automobiles, and VTA’s doesn’t. Average driving speeds in Silicon Valley are close to 30 miles per hour, but VTA buses average less than 12 mph, and its light rail is not much better at 13.5 mph.
To its credit, VTA is adding some express buses to its system, but even these are not very fast. Route 102 takes 57 minutes to get from the Santa Teresa transit station in south San Jose to Page Mill Road. The same trip in an automobile takes only 25 minutes. Moreover, most of the transit centers served by these express buses do not have a large number of local buses radiating from them.
Frankly, I am dubious about the need to subsidize transit in Silicon Valley at all. Before the pandemic, in 2019, fares covered just 9 percent of VTA’s operating costs and none of its capital costs. VTA light-rail cars carried an average of fewer than 14 passengers over the course of a day, and its buses carried fewer than 9. All of these numbers fell due to the pandemic and have been slow to recover.
To justify the $650 million in subsidies it receives from taxpayers each year, VTA needs to be more than just a zombie system running empty trains and buses around the region. I propose to redesign the system to look something like the attached map, which follows the multiple hub-and-spoke model used by most major airlines.
Click map to open larger image
First, six primary hubs or transit centers (shown as red stars) should be located near freeway off-ramps scattered throughout the region. Frequent, nonstop buses (shown as red lines) would run from every primary transit center to every other primary transit center. Second, four secondary hubs or transit centers (shown as blue stars) would each have frequent nonstop buses (shown as blue lines) to two of the primary centers. Third, frequent local spokes or bus routes (shown as yellow lines) would radiate away from the primary and secondary transit hubs. (Lines show origins and destinations only and not exact routes.)
Local buses would probably still average only about 12 miles per hour, but the nonstop buses would operate at freeway speeds, thus greatly increasing the average speed of the system. Buses could serve dual or triple duty, perhaps running a local route from a neighborhood to a secondary transit center, then running nonstop to a primary transit center, then to another primary transit center, then doing a local route from that transit center. This would allow many people to travel without changing buses.
Transit centers would require a minimum of new infrastructure. Basically, they would just be parking strips on a street near a freeway on- or off-ramp, with signs and perhaps a bus shelter. Some of VTA’s light-rail lines could be modified to run non-stop between some of the transit centers, but as the rail lines wear out, VTA should replace them with buses, which are faster, more flexible, and less expensive than railcars.
The capital costs of this system would be low, and I estimate a system like this would cost no more to operate than VTA’s current annual budget. While the transit centers I’ve identified may not be perfect, a system like this could be designed and implemented fairly quickly, reflecting the flexibility of buses vs. trains. If new economic centers open up or old ones decline, the system can be modified practically overnight.
While VTA’s current route map is designed for the early 20th century, this system is designed for the 21st century. Instead of mainly serving downtown workers, it will serve workers in and other travelers to economic centers throughout the region. VTA should consider something like this before planning another rail or slow bus line.
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