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What did BART cost San Mateo County? Photo Author.
It would be nice if there were a simple answer to that question. SamTrans (San Mateo County Transit District) says in one place on their website that their capital investment for the Airport Extension was $171 million (this is an oft-repeated number). In their audited financial report however, the total is as follows: $100 million to buy into BART’s existing service (San Mateo was not part of the three-county founders), $52.352 million for the Colma Extension, $181.530 million for the South of Colma portion and $72 million more for a forgiven loan (more about that later).
That totals $405.882 million for their portion of the extension. But was that all that came from or through San Mateo? The answer is no. Under the operating agreement with BART, SamTrans was responsible for the operating loss of the extension and could pocket the profits. Let’s ignore the fact that that the last rail transit company in the country to earn a profit was the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company, known as the Red Arrow Lines. That profit disappeared in the 1960s.
And while the SFO extension is now finding an astonishingly high 70% farebox recovery ratio, it still does not earn a profit. Up through 2007, SamTrans funded the annual operating loss, starting June 22, 2003 (when the system finally opened) and that loss has cost an additional $40.693 million. Since the extension was not supposed to cost anything, SamTrans was caught by surprise.
BART too was surprised when its hyper-inflated ridership numbers for 2010 were supposed to be 68,600 daily riders and it measured out in 2008 at 28,542. The worst performing station was the palace at Millbrae with its cavernous parking garage where BART hoped to pick riders from parallel CalTrain into the city. Given the huge disparity in pricing (Caltrain is cheaper) and speed (Caltrain is faster) no one should have been surprised at the lack of riders (33,000 projected and 8,248 actual).
BART scrambled to eliminate its 3-car “ghost” shuttle service between Millbrae and the Airport that captured an average of one rider per car. But the bill for all this nonsense was too high for SamTrans and tempers flared in public. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission stepped in and created a “Settlement Agreement and Release of Claims” between the MTC, SamTrans and BART on April 27, 2007. And yes it was a divorce agreement but the alimony would be high for the jilting spouse.
This is the first part on the Airport Extension and part of a series detailing how and why we and the MTC fund grand transit projects. See Money Laundering at SamTrans for the next analysis.
BART pried another $158 million from SamTrans
Comments
The same people behind BART to Milbrae and BART to San Jose are the people behind high-speed rail. Is it all making sense now? They will lie to you and then turn the tables on you. Stop the Authority. Do not believe the Authority promises to fix what is in your back yard. Unite and support a reversal of the the high speed rail bond issue. Dismantle the Authority.
Re "astonishingly high 70% farebox recovery ratio":
This is simply an outright lie from BART/MTC.
The voodoo accounting used to achieve that fraudulent number is that *ALL* of the revenue that comes from any trip that starts or ends at COLMA, SSF, San Bruno, SFIA or Millbrae is credited to the "account" of the extension.
So a $5.95 ride from Dublin to Colma or vice versa -- no airport, no extension involved -- is ALL voodoo allocated to the extension, even though 90% of the trip is on the non-San Mateo BART system. Likewise Concord-Millbrae or Fremont-SFIA.
They're pretending the trains and stations and tracks north of Daly City are free!
Q: How do you tell if MTC's Steve Heminger or BART's Dorothy Dugger or SLVG's Carl Guardino are lying?
A: Their lips are moving.
BART to SFO exemplifies the bizzaro world of Bay Area transportation politics. Many transit advocates and advocacy groups warned of this impending disaster for years in countless meetings, but we were told that we don’t know what we are talking about. Now as it turns out, we were 100% right. The BART/SFO apologists claim that it was opened at the worst possible time (June 2003), “We are in a recession and recovering from 9/11.” They claim the projections were made in better economic times, although BART system wide ridership was significantly higher in 2003 than when the projections were made in the early 1990’s when ridership was relatively flat and we were in somewhat of a recession at the time. The four station SFO/Millbrae was supposed to attract 68,000 new riders, 88,000 when you throw in Colma which was opened 1996, and was not going to lose ridership when the SFO line opened. So now we get into another bizarre aspect of this boondoggle.....
As the initial ridership wasn’t anywhere near the grossly inflated projections, the transit deities running this freak show decided to include Colma station/ridership (opened 7 years prior to the SFO line) as part of the SFO extension which made the poor SFO ridership look better than it actually is. So whenever ridership “on the SFO extension” is reported, it is quite deceptive since they include Colma ridership in the SFO extension ridership numbers. Colma lost a significant amount of ridership when SFO opened; Daly City lost some ridership also as people using these two stations found the new stations more convenient. But we must remember that Colma and Daly City will not lose any ridership due to the SFO extension, the transit spokesdroids and BART cheerleaders can never be wrong, can they?
The oddities don’t end here…..
San Mateo/Samtrans had to pay BART a “buy-in fee” ($200 million) this deal was brokered with the BART extension to Colma. An initial $100 million was paid for the Colma extension and another $100 million (plus interest) was to be paid when the SFO extension began construction. I don’t know if you have included the full “buy-in fee” in your analysis? The $200+ million was used to build BART extensions in the East Bay.
Caltrain (Samtrans) also must pay $700,000.00 yearly “rent” to BART for use of the Millbrae station. Before BART, the old Millbrae station was essentially free for Caltrain. Valuable property that could have been used to expand Caltrain tracks in Millbrae was given away to BART. Now Caltrain improvements/expansion is severely constrained through Millbrae.
On the subject of rents, the SFO Airport is charging BART $2.5 million a year “rent” for the BART station in SFO property. I don’t know if San Mateo ends up paying this or not?
The absurdities go on and on.
Ed Norton: Very helpful comments. In two later articles, the extra $100 million plus interest is dealt with, as this must be paid from "profits" on the airport extension. The Millbrae station rent I completely overlooked and will add it in. The SFO rent was a bone of contention because SamTrans considered it capital payback to the airport (thus not their problem) while BART considered it an operating expense, to be funded by SamTrans.
Colma is technically part of the extension as it intrudes into San Mateo County. Capturing all of the costs of BART to SFO may prove impossible (i.e. San Francisco hired a full-time attorney to squat on this issue) but this is an attempt to capture known public costs. It is so far above the admitted costs that most won't believe it.
All help is gratefully appreciated.
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