Published Friday, December 10, 2004, in the Paly Alto Daily

By Luke Stangel

Valley Transportation Authority officials approved yesterday the
environmental impact report for a $4 billion proposal to run new BART
lines from Fremont to Santa Clara, amid assertions made by
transportation activists that the project is wasteful and that cheaper
and faster alternatives exist.

Yesterday's 11-to-1 vote was a major milestone for the project. The
transportation agency now awaits federal approval of the project's
environmental impact statement, which could come in early 2007, VTA
spokeswoman Brandi Hall told the Daily News.

In the meantime, VTA officials will continue with preliminary
engineering into the 16.3 mile extension, which requires a
subway-style line under downtown San Jose, Hall said. Construction is
slated to begin in 2015.

However, the Federal Transit Administration -- the agency that will
look at the environmental impact statement in 2007, the Santa Clara
County Grand Jury and transit activists have all said that the project
is too big and needs to be scaled back.

"They're billions of dollars short to construct the line," BayRail
Alliance Executive <http://www.bayrailalliance.org> Director Margaret
Okuzumi said. "Assuming that they are able to build it, where's the
money coming from to operate the line?"

The project will be largely funded by a half cent sales tax measure
approved in 1996 and 2000. With the cooling economy, the VTA did not
gather as much sales tax revenue as it had hoped, and will need to
look for more money elsewhere, Hall said.

This could come in the form of another ballot measure in 2006 which
would establish a permanent half cent sales tax.

Okuzumi sits on the VTA's Policy Advisory Committee, and said
yesterday there were other, less glamorous ways to improve public
transportation in Santa Clara County with $4 billion.

She suggested:
* Electrifying Caltrain lines to make the trains faster.
* Adding more trains to the Altamont Commuter Express line, which
starts in Stockton, runs through Fremont and ends in San Jose.
* Adding more trains to the Amtrak Capitol Corridor, which
runs from San Jose to Sacramento.
* Putting more buses on the street.

"It's not like there's any one silver bullet," Okuzumi said. "But
there's a whole network of things that could have worked better and
sooner -- most importantly, that we could afford -- without going back
to the voters with another tax, which I think won't pass."