☆ Analysis: BART has no business pursuing pointless expansion projects
California public transit expert Tom Rubin tackles, point by point, why planned BART extensions to DTSJ and Eastridge may be technically possible but won't deliver on key promises. An Opp Now exclusive.
People wonder if the BART extensions to Downtown San Jose and Eastridge are feasible. Feasible has several different definitions. First, technically feasible: Is it possible to extend this predominantly subway line? The answer is yes. Technological problems are generally fixable if you throw enough money at them, and BART proponents are very prepared to throw other people's money at the project with both hands—as we've seen for well over two decades now.
Second, financially feasible. If we're willing to raise taxes enough times, and Bay Area residents are willing to go along with it, the answer here is also yes. We've seen this several times already in the Santa Clara County. And there's another proposal we're expecting to come up soon: to raise bridge tolls by a buck and a half for five years. Now, this one's getting some opposition but is still on the table.
A third feasibility consideration is this: Does the organization have the management capability to extend to DTSJ and Eastridge? They must, in order to receive promised federal grant money. With BART, this is questionable, but I've never seen a project denied for it (though this could still happen).
But feasibility doesn't take into account if a BART expansion is worthwhile, if it's even a good idea. And it's been a hard no for quite a while. However, proponents have refused to admit it and can't be made to admit it, so these projects are still on the books.
A major problem is that BART sees regular, significant reductions in ridership. The San Jose extension wasn't very practical to begin with; but now that remote work, education, medical services, and shopping have taken over, the Bay Area's need for transit to work destinations (particularly in the central business industry) has gone way down. This is a bigger issue in San Francisco than in any other place in the U.S. and perhaps the world. But San Jose isn't unmarked by these trends. It's expensive for companies to maintain headquarters in physical office space, and many jobs (even including meetings and training sessions) are easily done from home. And brick-and-mortar retail is becoming far less important with the rise of online retailers. Now, would the federal government actually stop BART's extension based on these impracticality factors? I'm not sure.
Some people step in here and say that since BART helps the environment, it's not a big deal that extensions could be underutilized. However, this claim is somewhere between highly questionable and provable as untrue. Here's the thing: If you can get a lot of people riding a transit vehicle, it's possible that you reap an environmental advantage. However, when running empty vehicles (and BART, unfortunately, has been running empty and near-empty trains for quite some time), the potential of that advantage disappears. It just doesn't pencil out. And even if you look nationally, transit as a whole isn't an energy saver, and energy is very closely tied to greenhouse gas emissions.
What about improving traffic congestion? Public transit does not reduce traffic congestion, as I published in a study for Reason on large metropolitan areas. According to the research, as transit utilization increases, traffic congestion also increases. It seems counter-intuitive. And it's not a direct cause and effect, but what happens is that the same decisions that go to building transit are accompanied by other decisions contra to reducing traffic congestion (i.e., building road capacity improvements where they make sense). Now, transit can reduce congestion for a short period of time for a particular corridor. The best example is the original BART opening in '72, which was extended across the Bay in '74. The BART Impact Study showed that traffic congestion on the Bay Bridge was reduced—but it quickly rebounded. This is called the Iron Law of Congestion: meaning that if space opens up somewhere on a road (e.g., through adding a freeway lane or expanding public transit), a new car will appear as if by magic to take up that space. It's not a popular thing to say, but a BART extension won't impact—or permanently impact—traffic congestion in San Jose.
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