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In our last meeting, we developed ideas for our Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) reform plan. Notable guests were Margaret Okuzumi, Executive Director of BayRail Alliance, and Rob Williams of the Modern Transit Society. Several SCVTARU members were also in attendance.

We developed the following ideas for our VTA reform plan:

• Replace the current VTA Board of Directors (where all 12 members consist of and are appointed by city councils and county supervisors) with a 7-member body consisting of two (2) at-large members and one (1) member per each of the 5 supervisor districts of the county. The 7 members would be directly elected by voters in Santa Clara County, similar to how voters in Alameda County directly elect AC Transit Board members, and similar to how voters in San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties directly elect BART Board members. Santa Clara County voters currently have no say on who spends their transportation tax dollars.
• Place a temporary halt for the San Jose BART extension project. This will enable other critical transit projects (i.e. extra bus and light rail service) promised to voters in Measure A in 2000 to be implemented. VTA has borrowed nearly $200 million of your tax dollars against anticipated 2000 Measure A revenue just to jump-start "preliminary engineering" for the San Jose BART extension - money that could have easily offset the four service cuts and three consecutive fare hikes since 2001. Part of the reason why voters passed an ongoing half-cent sales tax for transit operations in the early 1970's is to maintain strong public transit service that is affordable.
• Reverse a decision by the VTA Board of Directors back in June to raise transit fares for the third consecutive year. In January, the adult base fare will be raised from the current $1.50 to $1.75. VTA claims that this fare hike would save $5.4 million this fiscal year. However, independent research on VTA's 2004-2005 Fiscal Year Budget indicates that $5.5 million of your tax dollars can be saved if VTA performed a 2% reduction in direct labor and benefits - specifically at the senior management level. VTA has not used any of the $80 million that they are authorized to borrow for the sake of avoiding service cuts. The fact that VTA has not used any of the borrowed money for bus operations is particularly disturbing, as VTA has borrowed nearly $200 million just for studies of the planned BART extension (the Measure A money that is being used for the studies could, of course, be used to buttress the rest of the county's public transit system).
• No new capital projects (transit or highway) unless VTA transit fares and service levels are maintained and acceptable levels of transit ridership and traffic relief are met.
• Separate VTA's other duties (i.e. highway design/construction, public transit, land use, and congestion management) into different agencies with Board of Directors members directly elected by voters. VTA's current "consolidated" model leads to many conflicts of interest. An example of this can be found between San Jose and Morgan Hill, where two extra lanes were added in both directions of U.S. Highway 101. About 6 months after the new lanes opened in November 2003 (built with over $55 million of your tax dollars), there were reports of traffic gridlock returning to the area. Worse, with the development of Coyote Valley near San Jose's southern border with Morgan Hill and its scheduled opening in 2007, the "traffic relief" in the area will only last four years. This has come at the expense of Caltrain ridership between Gilroy and San Jose (funded by VTA) which has dropped over 30% since the new lanes opened last May. This runs counter to VTA's own mission statement of "reducing congestion" for the entire county.
• Implement more of our financial strategies in Transit Medicine from 2003. Specifically, improve connections between local/regional buses, and rail services like Caltrain and ACE. According to independent research, a 2% reduction in labor costs would have saved $5.5 million of your tax dollars - more than VTA's latest fare hike approved by the Board of Directors in June which "saves" $5.4 million of your tax dollars.

If there is anything you want to add to our proposal, please let us know at info@vtaridersunion.org. Make sure your response has "REFORM" in the Subject: line so we know what your email is about.

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