Last week, as reported by the San Jose Spotlight, VTA’s Capitol programs voted to defer the Vasona light rail extension indefinitely, until are signs of demand. The project was forecast to generate extremely low ridership, a total of 717 net new riders by 2035, with an estimated cost of about $400M – a $650,000 per new daily rider. Kudos to VTA for moving to stop a project that had outlived its vision, and moving away from a philosophy to keep projects approved by voters decades in the past, regardless of current merit.
Meanwhile an effort to cure the woes of its existing light rail lines, which have been hemorrhaging riders, VTA is looking at new vehicle technologies. This path is on the lines recommended by the Santa Clara County Grand Jury report, which cited long-time transit and rail opponents including Randal O’Toole of Cato making the case that light rail is an obsolete technology.
Unfortunately, VTA is looking at technology to fix problems that are caused by fundamental land use – which is slowly catching up in some parts of the system – and implementation issues – slow speeds caused by street obstacles and lack of signal priority. Replacing light rail vehicles with buses slowed in traffic – even autonomous buses slowed in traffic – would not solve the fundamental problems of uncompetitive and inconvenient service.
The technology that solves that problem set is not buses, it is elevated, bidirectional, Group Rapid Transit, which goes over intersections instead of stopping for them. It is also what Google identified as the preferred technology to connect the Mtn. View Transit Center with their headquarters north of 101. Therefore it would make sense to use it to also connect with their San Jose and Sunnyvale HQs, and that combination would easily amortize the production equipment and site to make it, so that extending it throughout the SF Bay Region and into the Central Valley would also make sense — as a dense network, 1/2 mile or less to routes. We can also stack bicycle and pedestrian paths above the Group Rapid Transit. All of this can cost a small fraction of the cost of light rail, and be highly attractive and a joy to ride, with a view of the urban forest and the hills around us to let us feel at home in nature again.
Vasona extension didn’t reach downtown Los Gatos, so of course it wouldn’t be worth it as proposed.
One item that does bite VTA in the butt is lack of 3car stations on the Winchester line. Not because there demand, but because after a Levi’s stadium event, Winchester trains are only 2-car long, so take longer to clear crowds in direction of downtown.
The clear winner here is the platform extensions. Very little operational cost increases with +50% capacity on gameday and other events, which is far better than all of the other big options. San Carlos and smaller projects are easier to fund and depend on ridership on their own terms, they are separable from the rest.