Joffe: An ‘anti-transit’ expert responds to recent criticism

In a recent San José Spotlight opinion piece , columnist Monica Mallon accuses me of posing as a pro-transit expert while trying to undermine public transportation. While I welcome the attention she has brought to my writing, I think Mallon and other transit advocates would benefit readers more by addressing my critiques rather than dissecting my motives or organizational affiliations.

In San Jose and the rest of the Bay Area, opinion leaders have such a strong and uniform preference for expanding transit that they often ignore counterarguments. But this policy monoculture does not serve the public who should instead hear a robust debate of any given expansion plan.

This lack of dialogue may explain VTA’s incredible decision to build the Eastridge Regional Connector light rail extension . This 2.4-mile project is expected to cost $652.9 million . Of the 4,354 daily riders the extension is expected to serve, only 1,316 will be new to transit. Assuming VTA’s capital investment has a useful life of 50 years, the capital cost of the extension works out to $8.21 per passenger. That is on top of the high operating costs of VTA light rail, very little of which is offset by fare revenue. Finally, construction and operation of the extension will result in temporary and permanent lane closures on the Capitol Expressway, increasing congestion and thus tailpipe emissions.

Perhaps if there was a more robust debate about transit in San Jose, VTA would have been obliged to conduct a proper cost-benefit analysis of the Eastridge project. Instead, it has fallen to the state auditor , hardly an “anti-transit think tank,” to insist that VTA conduct cost-benefit analysis when considering large capital projects in the future.

To the extent that Mallon grapples with my arguments in her opinion piece, she sometimes misrepresents them. Noting that I have said that “BART should not ask for additional public funding without addressing inefficiencies first,” she observes:

“On the surface, this seems like a fairly reasonable argument for fiscal responsibility. However, the recommendations offered — such as cutting service and privatizing operations — are clearly aimed at weakening public transit rather than setting it up for success.”

But here she misstates what I wrote in the Mercury News . I did not call for service cuts on BART, and rarely do so in any transit debate, because I agree that decreasing the frequency of departures makes using a transit system less convenient and thus further reduces ridership. In that article, I recommended BART reduce operating costs by using driverless trains. This would allow BART to increase frequency — ideally to once every five minutes or less — as Paris is doing right now on its Line 14, which it automated just in time for the Olympics.

Also, in writing about Bay Area transit, I have only called for privatizing one system: the San Francisco cable car . This service is more of a tourist attraction than essential transportation, and thus should be profitable. While in an ideal free market world all transportation systems would be private and unsubsidized, I recognize that it is not a feasible option for BART, VTA, Caltrain, etc. because these services cannot operate profitably.

As with any service, transit has both benefits and costs. Clearly, Manhattan could not have achieved its leading position in finance, publishing and other industries without robust subway and commuter rail systems. But ignoring the cost side of the ledger is a recipe for waste as we have seen with San Francisco’s massively overbuilt $2.2 billion Salesforce Transit Center.

VTA will continue making similar errors, like the Eastridge connector and Silicon Valley BART, unless and until there is a real debate about South Bay transit policy.

Marc Joffe is a Walnut Creek resident and a federalism and state policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

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