Published September 2004, in the The Sierra Club Yodeler,
the newspaper of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club

Build it -- and what if they don't come?

What happens when transit planners assume transit-oriented development
-- instead of making sure it happens

By Roy Nakadegawa

"If wishes were horses, beggars would still wish for Cadillacs."

The solution to our problems of sprawl, smog, affordable housing, and
urban decay does not lie in relieving congestion. History has shown
that we will have congestion whatever we do. With six billion humans
on the planet, all the money in Fort Knox could not eliminate
congestion.

We can make our cities much more livable, however, by coordinating
land use around transit centers. We have built immensely expensive
systems of rail transit -- and have plans for more -- but have we
coordinated land development with them? The public and politicians
understand some of the advantages of mass transit, but they tend to
think of it out of context. They assume that transit projects will
bring good development. Unfortunately look at the example of BART.
After 30 years, what stations have evolved vibrant, active transit
centers?

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission oversees most state and
federal transportation funds for the Bay Area. MTC has allocated
transit funds based largely on biased studies and/or passage of local
transit ballot measures with political influences. All too often
local jurisdictions have hired consultants to produce favorable
reports. The reports calculate benefits as if extensive
transit-related development were going to occur around the rail
project -- but the city or county makes no commitment to changing the
zoning or other planning regulations to match the study assumptions.
They continue to allow auto-dominated development. MTC staff is
capable of performing unbiased evaluations, but the MTC accepts the
biased study anyway.

Since rail uses fixed routes, coordination with land use is especially
essential for generating ridership. One of the most important changes
that MTC can make would be to insist that local jurisdictions adjust
zoning and other planning guidelines to conform to the assumptions of
the transit study. Approval of transit projects should be conditioned
on local implementation of land-use regulations equivalent to those
used in projecting ridership.

MTC is finally beginning -- with great tentativeness -- to move in
this direction by hiring a senior planner to oversee the integration
of land-use planning with transportation projects.

Evaluating BART extensions

BART extensions are the most expensive transit projects in the Bay
Area. How has MTC evaluated them?

The Environmental Impact Report/Study (EIR/S) for the Millbrae/San
Francisco Airport (SFO) extension, prepared in 1998, projected costs
of $25 per trip per new rider (all costs -- capital, operational, and
maintenance -- divided by projected new ridership). The project cost,
however, was 25% higher than projected, and ridership to date has been
50% lower. If this percentage holds over time, actual trip cost will
be over $60.

BART's Warm Springs extension

In 1991 MTC estimated the cost-effectiveness for BART's proposed
extension to Warm Springs (in southern Fremont) at $72 per trip per
new rider. Design changes were made, and so last year BART prepared a
Supplemental EIR/S. The SEIR/S reports that by 2025 total ridership
(existing and new riders) will be 7,200 trips per day and construction
costs $634 million, but does not indicate the cost per trip per new
rider.

The SEIR/S' ridership projection assumes greater development around
Warm Springs. The city of Fremont has actively pressed for this
extension and has known its alignment for more than a decade, yet has
done nothing towards rezoning to support the extension with
station-area development. Due to limited funds Fremont eliminated the
Irvington station altogether.

Even with impossibly favorable assumptions I can not see the cost per
trip per new rider being less than $40.

Another problem with this extension is that $145 million of the cost
is supposed to come from the operating surplus of the Millbrae/SFO
extension, but because of low ridership, BART now projects this will
not materialize until 2020, if ever.)

San Jose BART

As recently as 2002 MTC projected the cost-effectiveness for a BART
extension beyond Warm Springs to San Jose at over $100 per trip per
new rider. The latest EIR/S for this extension, produced by the
Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), estimated a high ridership
figure based on the assumption of major growth in Santa Clara County.
Downtown San Jose is to have almost 30 times greater housing and six
times more employees with BART than today. VTA is administering the
San Jose BART project because all funding comes from Santa Clara
County. VTA projected that with the extension, downtown San Jose
would grow to hold 178,000 housing units and 144 million square feet
of office and business development within 20 years.

Is such a projection reasonable? During the boom times of 1992 to
2000, downtown San Jose saw only 800 new housing units and 3.2 million
square feet of office and business development.

In 2000, when the economy was still good, the city approved a
320,000-square-foot office project -- with 1,108 parking spaces.
Placing so much parking in a dense downtown does little to lure
commuters out of cars.

San Jose BART's other stations and parking strategy are similarly
questionable. Since existing development around this route's stations
is very low-density, to attract riders VTA plans to construct almost
10,000 parking spaces, mostly in structures adjacent to stations.
This parking would cost at least $250 million, plus land costs.
Parking is the worst use of land, especially in a prime location where
Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is supposedly planned. And again,
San Jose and adjoining cities have not rezoned the station areas for
TOD.

From their lack of commitment to land-use planning, VTA doesn't appear
serious about building this extension.

Are the projects in trouble?

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has rated the San Jose
extension as "not recommended". This casts doubt on $800 million in
federal funding that project proponents had counted on.

Both Warm Springs and San Jose have been expecting substantial funds
from the state. Due to the condition of the state budget, such
funding has been reduced to a trickle.

To trim the San Jose BART project budget, VTA has eliminated one
station and cut some maintenance facilities, and has not fully
budgeted for operations after completion. Even with the inflated
ridership figures and the `lean' budget, the EIR/S estimates the cost
per trip per new rider at over $31. The EIR/S estimates that after 20
years fares will provide 71% of the costs, but no U.S. transit system
recovers such a large percentage from fares.

If the funds are found, and even if one believes the optimistic
projections, both Warm Springs and San Jose would require a public
subsidy of at least $31 per trip over 20 years. This is more than
what we provide a family of three on welfare for bare subsistence.

MTC has placed both projects in its top priority category for
construction.

What You Can Do

The MTC commissioners are local elected officials with little
transportation expertise, and their allocation of funds often is not
cost-effective. We need to make them aware of public concern about
the
tremendous costs of ineffective projects based on land use that may
never happen, and to insist that MTC lower the priority for such
projects. Due to the serious funding problems, now is a good time to
make such changes.

Write to:
Metropolitan Transportation Commission
Steve Kinsey, Chair; and Commissioners
101 Eighth St.
Oakland, CA 94607
fax: (510)464-7848

with a copy to executive director Steve Heminger at the same address.
Urge MTC to revise its priority rankings for mass-transit projects.
These should be based on MTC's independent analyses, using criteria
similar to the FTA's and locally established performance measures,
plus assurances that appropriate local land-use regulation is in place
before a project is listed for funding.

Write letters to the editor of Bay Area newspapers to let the public
know of the expensive and ineffective transit projects that MTC is
placing on its priority list.


As a professional engineer and BART director, and a former director at
AC Transit, Roy Nakadegawa has traveled extensively studying land use
and development as well as transit applications and reviewing numerous
transit projects. He has been nominated to serve on several oversight
committees on national transit research projects.