SANTA CLARA VTA RIDERS UNION
P. O. Box 390069
Mountain View, CA  94039-0069
http://www.vtaridersunion.org/

NEWS RELEASE

TO: Editor or News Assignment Desk or Transportation Reporter

Press Contact (in alphabetical order):	

Eugene Bradley	24 hr. cell/pager (408)888-2208 
email: eegenebradley@yahoo.com

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (December 9, 2005) – The Santa Clara VTA Riders Union 
(SCVTARU – http://www.vtaridersunion.org/), a transit advocacy and 
watchdog group in the South Bay, tonight reacts to the Santa Clara 
Valley Transportation Authority (VTA – http://www.vta.org/) announcement 
of their "temporary" withdrawal of bidding for $750 million in federal 
funding for their BART to Silicon Valley project 
(http://www.vta.org/news/releases/2005/12_dec/nr12-06_2005.html):

"While it is a shock that VTA has temporarily withdrawn its federal bid 
to bring BART to Silicon Valley, it ultimately comes as no surprise.  
Our group had many questions on ridership projections for the project.  
Amongst which were whether or not San Jose's sprawl would promote BART 
ridership and the need for additional sales tax to fund operating costs 
for the BART project.  Independent web sites such as VTA Watch 
(http://vtawatch.blogspot.com/) were right to raise credible, legitimate 
talking points on how fraudulent VTA's ridership claims for the BART 
project were."

"Given how the project's chief advocate, San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales, 
was found to have deceived San Jose taxpayers on contracts with NorCal 
Waste Systems (http://www.norcalwaste.com/), it was only a question of 
how much Mayor Gonzales deceived Santa Clara County taxpayers on 
bringing BART to Silicon Valley.  It would have been a matter of when 
the Federal Transportation Administration (FTA) would have caught on to 
the deception and thus continued to withhold federal funding for the BART 
project."

SCVTARU hopes VTA learned its lesson on reporting statistics for a major 
project like BART.  We hope VTA bases future ridership projects on facts, 
not political pressure or deception.

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About the Santa Clara VTA Riders Union
--------------------------------------
Founded in October 2000 by Eugene Bradley, the Santa Clara 
VTA Riders Union is a grassroots-based organization dedicated 
to ensuring that elected officials improve and implement 
cost-effective, frequent, and reliable mass transit in Santa 
Clara County.  Our web site is at www.vtaridersunion.org.  
We are based in Sunnyvale, CA.  Our organization has 
absolutely no affiliation with, nor is endorsed by, the 
Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) in any way 
whatsoever.

Note to Editors and News Desks:  More information on SCVTARU 
can be found at the following URLs:
http://www.vtaridersunion.org/whoarewe/who.html
http://www.vtaridersunion.org/PR