By Bruce Barton
There’s a mixture of good news and some cause for anxiety when assessing the current and future regional transportation picture.
Among local action items, the Santa Clara County roads department, coming off a resurfacing project of Foothill Expressway, is working on traffic synchronization along Foothill to improve traffic flow. The county’s now-completed intersection improvements at Foothill and El Monte Avenue have begun to have their intended effect of diverting through traffic from El Monte to San Antonio Road.
The only element of the El Monte-Foothill project yet to be completed is installation of a new signal controller at the El Monte and Covington Road intersection, said Jim Porter, Los Altos public works director. Porter expects even better traffic flow after the controller is installed within four to six weeks. Meanwhile, staff is exploring safety enhancements in the wake of the project and plans to report back to the city council in April.
Outside the Los Altos limits, completion of the new overpass at Highway 85 and U.S. 101 north in Mountain View is approximately 15 months away, on time and on budget, per Measure B funds approved by voters in 1996.
Given current state and federal budget woes, the region’s future transportation picture is riddled with question marks.
A proposal to extend Bay Area Rapid Transit to Santa Clara County, the big-ticket item under Measure A in 2000, is the biggest and most expensive challenge. Naturally it has become, by far, the most highly publicized bone of contention.
Members of the county’s prime lobbying organizations, the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, who have tirelessly campaigned for BART, continue to push hard for the Valley Transportation Authority’s full funding of the 16.3-mile extension from the Warm Springs station in Fremont to Santa Clara University.
Led by CEO Carl Guardino and Los Altos resident Bill Coleman, chairman of the board, the group asserts the VTA can and should fund BART first to meet the mandate of the voters. Guardino points to SVMG surveys that he says show BART remaining the No. 1 priority among voters, even in Los Altos and North County which is geographically farthest removed from the plans.
“Three years into the recession, BART countywide was still the highest priority,” Guardino said, emphasizing the BART extension was a catalyst to revitalizing Silicon Valley’s economy. Used in conjunction with Caltrain, BART could improve transportation options for hundreds of thousands of workers commuting in and out of the Valley, Guardino said. He said Los Altos and Los Altos Hills have a vested interest because many heads of Silicon Valley companies reside here.
“This area is in the process of urbanization,” Coleman said. “My belief is that in urban areas, (the best mode of transportation) is the subway. It’s like transportation on demand. The really big issues to keep Silicon Valley vibrant are education, the cost of housing and transportation. It’s hard to hire your next generation of workers without (good transportation).”
However, the problem with funding BART is money - a lack of it. Los Altos Mayor David Casas, on the VTA’s board of directors, said voters approved the half-cent sales tax for Measure A in 2000 when Silicon Valley was still in a period of unprecedented economic growth. Since then, the economy has tanked and the cost of funding BART has gone up. Casas said that if the VTA fully funded the BART extension, there would be no money left for other transportation projects, and there would be no funds to pay for BART operations. Casas is in favor of phasing in BART plans.
Guardino counters that delaying BART only pushes up the cost of the project and decreases its chances of becoming a reality anytime soon. Citing the “direct democracy” of the voters, he suggested any change in priority for BART should be put up before the voters.
But Casas notes the VTA is working on BART, having allocated $170 million for an engineering study as part of the design phase on the full extension. This is despite little or no funding help on the horizon from state or federal sources.
Although Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger favors BART’s coming to Silicon Valley, the current multibillion-dollar budget deficit precludes any help at the state level. Meanwhile, the Federal Transit Administration, for the second straight year, gave the BART extension a “not recommended” rating. Officials cited the poor financial condition of the VTA and a lack of specific ridership projections among reasons for the rating.
VTA board members are mulling options that could include putting another half-cent sales tax before the voters in 2006. But Santa Clara County Supervisor Liz Kniss, whose District 5 represents Los Altos and other North County communities, said another sales tax would not go over well with the voters.
“It would push the sales tax to 8.75 percent, the highest in California,” Kniss said.
In addition, Kniss acknowledged VTA “mismanagement and the lack of ability to adjust for income when the economy went down.” And even if the BART extension was fully funded now, she said, project completion would be at least 10 years away.
Like Casas, who has been involved in the VTA only in the past year, Kniss favors funding an array of transportation projects. She and Casas both pointed out that Measure A, although listing the BART extension first, did not explicitly prioritize it and listed a variety of projects. These included vehicle purchases for disabled access, improved Light Rail Service, Caltrain expansion and increased bus service.
“Measure A is a guiding document,” Casas said. “Each (item) is important to people from their own perspective.”
