Searching for a turkey around 1911. Photo collection of the author.
Out of the 27 Bay Area transit agencies, there have to be a few turkeys. However, the candidates are legion. Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) receives a nomination for its timid approach to casual carpools, by proposing to charge only $3.00 for the use of express lanes by a driver and two transit riders. Water Emergency Transportation Authority gets one for its vision of an imaginary need for ferry service between Oakland and South San Francisco. SamTrans scores very high for bleeding all its projects to cough up $508 million and counting for its share of BART to the Airport.
BART itself scores a triple-bogie for its multi-billion doillar push for three projects: BART to Livermore, BART to San Jose and BART’s utterly useless Oakland Airport Connector. That makes BART a Triple-Crown winner in this horse race. Then there’s the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, supposedly the planning agency for the Bay Area.
Like BART, the MTC is also a perennial winner as they push for funding goofy projects and act as an enabler to help them happen. The MTC assisted SamTrans to make some of the worst transit decisions seen in the Bay Area (to date). MTC and BART take first and second place, as they do every year. This is not news; it is a yawner. However, this year we have a strong third-place contender with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). The implication here is that they are so poorly operated, they can’t even take first place.
VTA’s 2000 Measure A sales tax was supposed to provide for a host of transit projects including the Dumbarton Rail Line and BART to San Jose. It was known when it went to the voters that the sales tax increase would not pay for all the proposed projects. Now, down the road and more sales tax increases later, it still won’t pay for all the projects.
Part of BART to San Jose supported by the VTA was $145 million in operating surplus from the SFO Airport extension planned to be directed towards San Jose. Even playing games with BART’s operating costs to generate a “surplus” fails to fill the $145 million gap, so the MTC, with VTA’s concurrence, redirected (borrowed) $91 million from the Dumbarton project over to BART. The voter’s voted for Dumbarton as an equal project but the VTA has decided it wanted BART more. This is eerily similar to the voters in San Mateo County opting for an electrified CalTrain in 1988 and not having it 20 years later, but instead more BART.
This cavalier approach to what VTA told the voters and what the voters will actually get was a subject of a Santa Clara Civil Grand Jury investigation, published last August. The Grand Jury found that the VTA had inaccurately described the effects of previous sales tax measures, resulting in the need for more taxes. The Grand Jury described the Citizens Watchdog Committee as more of a lap dog, since it was composed of the Citizens Advisory Committee and essentially reported to the Board. This is kind of like asking yourself if you did anything wrong… The Jury also found the VTA to be a staff-driven organization with political leadership.
VTA denied all charges, claiming the Grand Jury did not understand and that the Watchdog Committee was exactly as described in the 2000 Measure A Tax. This is exactly what the VTA said in 2004, when that Grand Jury found BART to San Jose to be an incredibly expensive project not understood by the VTA and further that the VTA was incapable of leading it in any event.
In between those two Grand Juries, the Hay Group Report claimed that the VTA had “lost its regional focus and strayed from its core business.” The report also noted that VTA needed to improve governance, multi-city representation and secure its financial future. The VTA implemented some changes but denied the general validity of the report.
Then, in what can only be described as Thanksgiving desert, we have the “Let them eat cake” incident. This is where bumbling incompetence would almost make the VTA lovable, if it only didn’t cost so much money. In December 2006, the VTA’s regular bakery closed and so lost its supply of birthday, retirement and other celebratory cakes. Rather than then finding a new bakery, the VTA put this out to competitive bid with a 33 page RFP, describing ingredients, fillings, texture, icings and the lot.
The winning bidder would also have to win a taste-off composed of VTA officer evaluators (one sample for five tasters please), deliver cakes when and where ordered from specified flavors and provide $3,000,000 general liability insurance (as described in Exhibit H). This may be the first RFP in history to specify the use of jimmies (sprinkles). Data provided in the RFP showed that the VTA orders about three cakes a month and the favorite topping is whipped cream.
Like many things at the VTA, this project went nowhere and the VTA now buys its cakes like ordinary mortals.
Comments
MTC doesn't even pretend to consider your opinion or anyone else's when they enable this insanity (except maybe politicians who like ribbon cuttings on big projects.) Just take a look at the news clips MTC sends around to their staff every day: not one negative MTC story. Ever. You'll see other blogs, opinion and, yes, even Examiner stories. But no Guy Span or anything else 'bad.'
www.mtc.ca.gov/news/headlines.htm
Why do you think BART to Oakland Airport is useless? Oh wait, you probably don't live in the East Bay and probably own a car. I appreciate your opinions, I just find them weird. To just say, "three useless projects" (with no explanation why) when they clearly are not, is a matter of opinion. The BART has been a mess this year, but I dont think that has much to do with the MTC.
I have noticed that. They don't note the stories that could be helpful to them like "Casual Carpools on the Bay Bridge." It's nice to live in a vacuum.
Kate: Check the links in the story. They point to back-up facts that seem to justify the opinions. You may find that a $6.00 Disney thrill ride to OAK from BART fails to serve the transit community, while sucking funds that could have been applied to AC Transit (project cost $450 million). BART to San Jose will be worse than BART to SFO in terms of speed, ridership, cost or however you want to measure it. Livermore's population is too small to justify a $3 billion extension, when most want to work in San Jose. I failed to mention the Antioch extension with diesel trains no less that would put BART's megalomania at a billion dollars...
Guy:
I don't want to sound like a BART apologist, but "BART's megalomania" is enabled mostly by MTC. It's like blaming the rat for coninuing to push the button that releases the food. The rat didn't set up the system, but he's definitely taking advantage of what the system is giving away.
Jean Paul: Again you are correct. Elected Officials sit on every board that makes transit decisions for the Bay Area. They are the directors and they approve shiny transit projects that they think will get them re-elected. Staff (and the MTC in particular) in order to keep their jobs, support what the elected officials want. This is a run-away machine with no governor. Thus we get BART to SFO and if they can squirrel away the funds, BART to San Jose.
Here are four examples of how MTC causes great harm to the Bay Area:
1.) MTC supported and promoted the short-sighted BART extension to the SF Airport, a weak idea that has produced BART's least patronized service.
2.) Despite strong voter support from Alameda, Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco, MTC quietly axed the plan to return passenger rail service to the Bay Bridge, after its Consultant characterized the proposal as "technically feasible but costly". The fact that all the other options were much more costly didn't matter to MTC.
3.) MTC recently shifted funds away from the vitally needed Dumbarton rail crossing.
4.) Despite climate change and an oncoming fossil fuel crisis MTC continues to push its massive Bay Area freeway expansion program.
There are many others.
Though not a resident, I have flown into OAK and also wonder why you consider the Oakland Airport Connector "useless". Not cost-effective I can understand, but presumably there is demand for travel from the airport to the nearest BART station, or else there would be no reason for the current AirBART shuttle bus.
As for the commenter who chided the MTC for not supporting restoration of service on the Bay Bridge: I assume he is talking about new service now, not the original decision to build the Transbay Tube. IMO the wisdom of building the Tube was demonstrated in the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which took the Bay Bridge out of commission and would have disrupted any rail service over it too. Service continued through the Transbay Tube after brief inspections found it undamaged.
George: I agree and have written extensively about Millbrae and the Airport Extension. I will work my way around to Dumbarton and BART to San Jose.
Sandy: The OAC is consuming transit dollars that were supposed to be allocated to things like mitigating bridge congestion and preserving current transit operations. Hegenburger Road is an ideal application for BRT, given its low congestion and six-lane width.
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