Friday, March 26, 2004
Politics As Usual
This is another case of political game playing, with BART, VTA, and the livelihoods of thousands of people being used as chips in the game. This game has been going on for some time; this is not the first transportation re-authorization bill. "In Transit" for January/February included pre-printed post cards for members to send to Congress asking them to vote yes on an even more expensive bill that also went nowhere. Democrats in Congress will continue this charade at least until after the re-election. (I think it unlikely that the Democrats will win the White House.) Then they will magically come up with a transportation bill in line with the president's spending limit and declare themselves reasonable and demand the president also be reasonable.
Even if they pass a bill that the president signs, the state will have to match funding to give BART and VTA enough money to complete the extension. This seems unlikely given the current budget crisis in Sacramento and BART's solid history of underestimating construction costs by 50%.
VTA's board continues to be unwilling to budge on BART, ranking it first on their list of projects to be funded in the next 25 years. Funding for lower ranking projects is dependent on how much money higher ranking projects cost. So if there is not enough money left after completing the BART extension, projects lower on the list are delayed or scrapped.
Completing the project is one thing. Operating it is another. There is no guarantee that, once completed, there will be enough revenue from fares to offset costs. In San Mateo County the San Francisco Airport BART extension does not draw enough riders to offset those costs, so SamTrans must make up the difference in the form of payments to BART. This is the source of friction between BART and SamTrans, which does not have enough money to subsidize the BART extension and still operate their own bus lines. VTA could end up in the same situation with the BART extension to San Jose.
While there might be money to operate the BART extension, without a dramatic increase in local sales tax revenue there will be little left over to operate both light rail and the bus system. The local economy, which is dependent on the computer industry, is lagging in recovering from the recession. Unless profit earning businesses recover to the same level they enjoyed in 2000 VTA will not see enough money to justify operating their own bus lines.
This means more layoffs and possibly, what is worse, privatizing the bus system. Many outside of VTA see that as a good thing. It lowers the cost of operating and maintaining buses -- at least, it looks that way on the surface. But let's face it -- being a bus driver sucks. The public hates us. The riders hate us. Management hates us. The only positive aspect of the job for many is a nice paycheck and good benefits. Without that there is little incentive to work for VTA. Once new employees see the political atmosphere they must endure they will choose to work elsewhere. Turnover will increase dramatically, which will cause training costs to skyrocket. And service will suffer as a result.
Politics at River Oaks ensures that administration will continue fully staffed. They will sacrifice drivers and service, and even the bus system itself, in order to preserve their own jobs. They insist on pretending that public sources of money will continue being available just as they have been for the last 30 years. But times are changing. Public transit is moving away from bus service and public money cannot be counted on to fund the system. In essence, VTA's bus drivers are being railroaded out of their jobs. The previous two layoffs are only the beginning of a slow slide that will only end when the bus system is run under contract to a private company that pays little more than minimum wage.
