The Driver's Room

VTA's Burns said Tuesday's results should not lead the agency to change course. He said the board should continue forward with all its projects, hoping that either the state government will rescue the BART line through the infrastructure bond on the November ballot, or local voters will change their minds in 2008 and provide another sales tax increase.

How much more clearly do the voters need to be before these assholes get it? And I'm sorry, but at this point being polite about it would just be stupid. It takes a real asshole to insist on going forward with projects when there is no funding because the voters rejected his efforts to deceive them at the polls.

It takes a real asshole to continue running the transit agency into the ground while ignoring obvious signs that it is headed for disaster.

It takes a real asshole to, in essence, flip off the public and say, "Shut up! We're going to do this MY way, and if you don't like it, bend over!"

But that is exactly what Burns and Gonzales and the SVLG are telling us. They see this as a battle to be won. And public sentiment is their opponent.

Burns said he would urge the VTA to adopt a long-range spending plan next week based on the assumption of another quarter-cent sales tax to cover funding shortfalls.

They're going to try it again in '08. It's like they're saying, "To hell with what the public thinks. What does the public know about running a transit agency? We're the professionals." Uh huh... you're professionals, alright. This is the biggest trick these "professionals" have tried to turn yet. Guess there just weren't enough johns around to make it work out.

But the fix they thought a new tax would buy them didn't come their way and they're hoping against hope that a bigger and better john in the form of state and federal funding will finance their next fix before the DT's hit.

Personally, I'm betting they won't get it... ever. It will take outside intervention to stop them from sucking the public dry. They won't stop until someone forces them to, which will mean disbanding VTA, privatizing the transit lines and stopping all future work on BART. But by that time it will be too late to save anyone's jobs. The drivers in that system will be able, if they are lucky, to tell stories of the good old days when there was a union and wages and benefits and the union contract gave them a sense of security. And if they are lucky, an hour of overtime will give them an extra $15 to spend... if they can get it.