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VTA Workshop
April 18, 2002, 11am
San Jose City Hall - City Council Chambers

Gladwyn D'Souza of Walk San Jose presented our proposal to the VTA Board and County Supervisors at a special VTA Workshop the morning of April 18. His notes and comments from that meeting are below.

Item 4 - Discuss the Proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 Operating and Capital Budgets- VTA staff presented their plan. Here is a sampling of comments they got from the Board, with answers from VTA staff:

• Cindy Chavez (San Jose)- What is the policy on providing eco passes to community groups? What is the policy on advertising? Provide a pie chart of the income streams that come into VTA. Let's have a discussion on diversifying our funding base.
• Forrest Williams (San Jose) - Is the eco pass partnership with industry exhausted. Answer from staff - No. 100k people have signed up for the program through their business.
• Manuel Valerio (Sunnyvale) - Instead of layoff can we reduce hours? Answer from Staff: Not on the agenda for discussion but very remote.
• Don Gage (County Supervisor) - Have there been Union and Staff workshops? Answer from Staff: yes. Meet with labor leadership more than once a week.

Item 5 - Receive a report regarding Fiscal Year 2003 Transit Service Reduction Plan. Staff says that there will be 4% reduction in bus service and 11% reduction in rail service. The reductions were a result of extensive public hearings and proposal reviews.

• Gage - The decline in ridership is due to the decline in jobs. When the economy picks up how will be able to accommodate the need for additional service? Answer from Staff: There is a yearly service plan where changes are made to accommodate. The plan accounts for service elimination as well as headway improvement. Route modification is based on public input. For example the low ridership from the senior towers in Santa Clara can be accommodate with a service cut and access via the 22 to connecting transit 3 or four minutes away. And Sunnyvale provided data why the 41 and 43 should not be eliminated even with the low boarding rate of 6-7 persons per hour because it was critical to their business. (How's that for balancing your checkbook on the backs of the minimum wage poor to the advantage of the business.)
• John McClemore (Santa Clara) - Santa Clara City Council voted against the bus cuts in the downtown. We also didn't buy the numbers provided by Staff. Liberty Towers (the senior housing mentioned in the previous paragraph) was one of the first examples of Transit Oriented Development in the region. Now Liberty along with Santa Clara University and the Superior Court are impacted by service cuts in the downtown.
• Manuel Valerio - Sunnyvale supports service reductions except for the 41 and 43. What are the likelihood of the shuttles going away now that they are seen as providing the replacement for the cutbacks? Answer from Staff: These are Caltrain shuttles and will be maintained as long as board stays above 6 persons per hour.
• Dena Mossar (Palo Alto) - (Yes. The gloves come off. We need to work with her.) First you cut the finger then the hand then the arm and all of a sudden you realize that something essential is missing. Today there are no alternatives in the Palo Alto region. Please provide assurances that the macro needs for the transit services and connectivity will be met. Obviously service cuts are part of the problem for reduced ridership. Then you point to the ridership and want more service cuts. Don't kill something as essential as an arm or a leg. Your accommodation of these revenue shortfall needs to be part of a larger vision. (I guess she will be voting no. Gets up and leaves for the rest of the open session.) Answer from Staff: Staff looks at the Total Transportation Element in our community including ADA service in the community. (Bureaucratize never fails to come to the rescue of a plutocrat! Must be taught in school. How to say nothing in 25 words or less and sound important doing it.)
• Gage - What is the criteria for bus lines or train cuts. It must be explained to the public. People need to understand the economics of business (or something to that effect.) Answer from Staff: the color lines show the ridership. Blah. Blah.
• Blanca Alvarado (County Supervisor) - Thanks to staff for the public hearings. Today's discussion is a first step. We have heard from all the stakeholders. We need to arrive at an answer that is in the best interest of the system. I would like to know what are the revenues generated by the bus riders and the rail riders. Look at the light rail boarding in the south san jose area. There is significantly lower boarding here (compared to buses) and the fares generated are deplorably low. What can be done to improve it? Should we run buses in the light rail corridor? What feedback do you get from the cities on fare and service? Bus ridership provides the bulk of the revenue for the system. They are the system.
• Tom Springer (Gilroy) - Alvarado is exactly right. We have to bring the cost down. What is in the best interest of the system? I'm willing to go outside the box. Maybe we should go with smaller vehicles or contact out our lower boarding areas.
• Joe Pirzynski (Los Gatos) - We have to think regionally. This crisis may be the tip of the iceberg. The cities are dependent on sale tax revenue uncomfortably. Consider Los Gatos with its small narrow streets and low boarding rate. Smaller shuttles rather than full size boxes will give us more fare box recovery. It will also help alleviate traffic and parking problem in the downtown. We are also concerned about the Vasona corridor and the large Transit Oriented Development we approved there. That system is threatened. Answer from staff - We are looking at shuttle service.
• Alvarado - What has the Congestion Management Agency to say? What impact will this have on what they are trying to control? How is all this going to affect their agency? Answer from Staff: No adverse comments from any of the member agencies. (Give me a break. How do we impact this?)

Item 6 - Receive a report regarding proposed fare increases.

• Gage - Plan to get us where we want to be so we can operate it successfully. Provide cheap service. Cutting service will reduce ridership. Answer from Staff: Expect to lose 2.1 million riders.
• David Cortese (San Jose) - What can the cites do as a proactive role to promote ridership? We all have different land use schemes and industrial development plans.
• Springer - Rate hikes don't go far enough especially on Express buses. Best deal around. It were up to me I would form an organization and get an eco-pass program going for the members. (yeah right.) Fare box recovery is important. Cannot live on sales taxes. The fiscal means of this state are bankrupt. We need to find a means of funding the system away from these year in year out crack in the wall plugs.

(What Gladwyn said on behalf of the SCVTARU:)
"Acknowledge that there is a revenue shortfall. We have submitted a list of ways to increase operating revenue that are function in other cities like San Francisco and included it in today's record. We ask that in exchange for fare increases we get better connected service. We also ask that cuts not come from the least expensive area of transit. Ontario for example put in a full Bus Rapid Transit system for $300M/- For that amount of money you would get one Light Rail link, one BART station, and two road interchanges. We ask that you take into account the users- children, the elderly, handicapped, and the medically impaired. And that you take into account the region's issues with childhood asthma rates, pre teen mortality, air, water, and quality of life. The present proposals discriminate against low income users and off peak riders. This creates a burden on the surrounding towns to provide more parking."

Editor's note: You can find our alternate proposal to VTA's fare hikes and service cuts here.

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