Absent State and federal temporary bailouts, which are scheduled to run out in 2026, BART is currently operating at a deficit of $300 million a year, in large part because its ridership has dropped by 60%. Yet BART’s $850 million Link 21 design is still chugging along as if the monumental travel changes brought on by the pandemic are irrelevant.

In fact, despite the huge drop in BART’s transbay ridership, the Link 21 focus to date has been on planning a second transbay rail tube between Oakland and San Francisco. As last count, at least $115 million had been spent to that end, with little of substance to show for the continuing stream of BART payments being made to its five Link 21 prime consultants. Nothing that is, unless one counts the multitudinous meetings asking people what they want, the excruciatingly long and endlessly repeated reports about process, the series of “high level” presentations to the BART Board singing the praises of the project and rosy-sounding PR releases.

Despite all this, and despite our efforts, BART has unaccountably failed to answer the most fundamental question of all; namely, does it any longer make sense to spend $45 billion or more on a second subaqueous rail connection between Oakland and San Francisco?

Despite the lack of discernible product and the unanswered questions, Link 21 continues to inch ahead.  If for reasons so far unstated, the project can nevertheless be justified, one can only hope that henceforth there will be a better nexus between the taxpayer dollars spent and useful product than has occurred during the first four years of the project.

On October 16, 2023, Muni Director of Transit Julie Kirschbaum made an excellent presentation before a well-attended Save Muni meeting. During the presentation she answered many detailed questions about Muni’s roughly 70 transit lines and the numerous problems Muni faces every day ranging from maintenance issues to political and constituent demands to repeatedly vandalized bus stops. In spite of  financial shortages, she pointed out how Muni was working hard to improve its farebox recovery and on-time performance, as well as increase the mean time between failures and strongly discourage disruptive passenger behavior.

Here are two of the system-wide issues that were raised at the meeting:

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At its October 18 Board meeting the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit District [SMART] endorsed staff plans for a marketing communications and public outreach plan to inform residents of Marin and Sonoma counties about the benefits SMART brings to the North Bay community.

“The primary focus of this marketing activity is to inform the community about the benefits of SMART.” The cost for the proposed marketing and communications effort is $302,000.

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On Friday October 20, 2023 the VTA Board of Directors convened a workshop designed to examine the current status of the BART Phase II project.

The Consultant made a lengthy presentation enumerating “unavoidable” factors that it described as having caused the $3.1 billion increase in project capital costs from the $9.1 billion established a little over a year ago by the Federal Transportation Authority to today’s $12.2 billion. Also presented was a substantial amount of detailed information about the project, consisting mainly of the difficult challenges and continuing uncertainties ahead.

The Directors were clearly interested in the subject and raised a number of questions. There seemed to be a general feeling that it was becoming increasingly difficult to explain to constituents the series of cost increases, particularly with respect to the switch to the 54-foot single bore tunnel from the previous and much more common twin bore approach. There was also a general concern over the prospect of still more delays and cost increases.

A new BART Phase II Steering Committee comprised of six members of the VTA Board, including Matt Mahan, Mayor of San Jose and Cindy Chavez, Santa Clara County Supervisor, has been established. The Committee appears to be prepared to delve more deeply and more independently into large outstanding questions, some of long standing. Patrick Burt, VTA Board member and Palo Alto City Councilman has been designated as the Chair of the group, the first meeting of which is scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday November 29^th.

The DTX project will extend the 78-mile existing Caltrain the last 1.3 miles into the Salesforce Transit Center in downtown San Francisco.  While the downtown is no longer the employment center it used to be, Salesforce remains a major nexus of local and regional transit systems which, when Caltrain is extended, will connect 11 passenger rail lines and over 40 bus lines.

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With its plan both to run diesel and electric trains between Gilroy and San Francisco, Caltrain appears to be facing a major dilemma of its own making. If implemented this ill-conceived plan would both significantly delay the long-awaited level boarding north of San Jose’s Diridon Transfer Station and, by having to continue operating both electrics and diesels, make the Caltrain operation significantly more costly than it otherwise would be.

Caltrain is…and has long been…in the politically difficult position of trying to operate a coherent commuter rail service through three California counties, each with active constituents, often at odds with one another. This is further complicated by the fact that even though Caltrain passes through three Bay Area Counties and is therefore a regional system, there has been little if any regional involvement in resolving the resulting regional problems.

Despite these handicaps it is essential that Caltrain’s actions during the next five years be pursuant to a carefully thought- out, unifying strategy. Unfortunately, there is at this time little evidence that such a strategy exists.

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