Caltrain’s next governance board workshop is coming up on Friday at 1pm, as the Caltrain board seeks to make decisions by the end of the year. The agenda packet is here.
The staff report analyzes a set of “self-directed” options among the three Caltrain counties. Currently, Caltrain is governed by a partnership among three county transit agencies, and managed by SamTrans, with a dedicated executive director for Caltrain.
The Caltrain board will be considering options for change with the goal of strengthening the accountability of the agency to its board. These options have implications for the ability to deliver on the goals of the Caltrain business plan for more frequent all-day service and for the ability to pursue stronger regional coordination of service and capital programs.
There are three options being considered:
1) the status quo, plus a dedicated executive director reporting to the Caltrain board
2) making the Caltrain executive director and 7 additional top staff be employees of Caltrain reporting to the Caltrain board
3) separating from SamTrans to create a standalone agency. This could include continuing the Joint Powers Authority that’s a partnership among three counties, or dissolving the JPA and creating a special district that is separate from the three counties and their transit agencies.
Option 2 would cost an additional $5.9 million per year above the status quo, while Option 3 would cost an additional $9.2 million per year, by sharing fewer services and employees between Caltrain and SamTrans.
Option 2 would have $4.6 million in startup costs, while Option 3 would incur an additional $48.9 million in startup costs, largely to rebuild back-end IT services.
Because options 2 and 3 involve the “unsharing” of services that had previously been shared with SamTrans, there would logically be additional ongoing costs to SamTrans and San Mateo County taxpayers.
For comparison, the additional costs to replace all the shared services from SamTrans would be the equivalent of more frequent weekend service (up from hourly today), and the equivalent of making 22nd street station accessible to people with disabilities following Americans with Disabilities Act standards.
Importantly for those that want to see a more regionally coordinated transit system, the staff report cautions that the complex, multi-year transition to option 3 would make participating in regional options for more coordinated service and capital projects more difficult, while option 2 could be an orderly step toward strengthened regional options.
In terms of the perception of the Caltrain board, the opinions are predictably bimodal, with (reading between the lines), the San Mateo County representatives favoring the status quo; four out of the six of the San Francisco and Santa Clara County representatives supporting a separate agency. It appears as though option 2 may “satisfice” with a majority of board members finding it a viable compromise.
Discussion of regional options back on the table
One piece of good news for those who want to see Caltrain engaging in discussions about “regional options” to provide better service coordination and capital projects has gotten back into the queue for the October workshop on Friday, October 22, 1:00pm – 4:30pm. Board members agree that the topics are important but less pressing than figuring out the three-county issues.
Your blogger’s opinion is that Option 2 is a reasonable compromise that can keep open doors toward stronger regional governance to improve service for riders and effectiveness of capital program delivery. Option 3 – using Measure RR funds to replace a lot of backend IT, finance, HR and marketing staff and technology – represents a waste of taxpayer funds that should be going into improving service, level boarding, accessible stations, and other improvements for riders.
What are your thoughts?
A pipe dream, but if you merged all the northern California regional/commuter rail systems into one state level agency, you’d be able to actually save money instead of spending more of it.
Take Caltrain, BART, ACE, Capitol Corridor, SMART, and maybe even San Joaquin, and merge it into the “Northern California Regional Rail Department” as a subsidiary of the California state DOT, and boom, you are half way to replicating the successful systems in Europe or Canada.
Transport for London is re-nationalizing London area rail lines because privatization didn’t work out. Deutsche Bahn has an efficient S Bahn and regional train network (provided they are given enough money for maintenance). Government of Ontatrio (GO) Transit operates an efficient service around Toronto’s metropolitan region.
New York State’s MTA, that runs the LIRR, Subway system, Metro North, etc has serious political issues that rival the ones here, but at least they don’t have constituencies wasting up to $48.9million because how dare we let another agency run a train line.
The problem with Caltrain governance is not that Caltrain is part of SamTrans. The problem is that there is no Democracy. Caltrain Board of Directors members are all politicians appointed by other politicians in secret meetings! So appointments are inevitably based on political favors, and result in both less competent Board members and numerous conflicts of interest. Because the Board membership is restricted to city and county politicians, each Board member’s true commitment and loyalty is to the city or county where they are elected, not to Caltrain and its potential passengers.
“Separating” Caltrain from SamTrans (with all the executives still working together in the same offices…?) is unlikely to change the quality of transit services provided by Caltrain or SamTrans in any meaningful way. Democracy, however, would, because a well-functioning transportation system is much more important to most voters than whether or not corrupt politicians are able to trade favors.