A quarter of a century ago, Santa Clara County's first light-rail train left
the station as excited supporters heralded a new wave of state-of-the-art
transportation to match the region's burgeoning high-tech industry.
But there was no grand celebration this month as Silicon Valley marked 25
years of light rail.
The near-empty trolleys that often shuttle by at
barely faster than jogging speeds serve as a constant reminder that the car is
still king in Silicon Valley -- and that the Valley Transportation Authority's
trains are among the least successful in the nation by any metric. Today, fewer
than 1 percent of the county's residents ride the trains daily, while it costs
the rest of the region -- taxpayers at large -- about $10 to subsidize every
rider's round trip.
Even light rail's supporters concede the train has not lived up to
expectations thus far, but they are optimistic that slow and steady increases in
rider counts will continue.
"I believe we are ultimately going to realize the (original) vision," said
Kevin Connolly, VTA's transportation planning manager. "But I think what's
happened is that it wasn't quite as easy or quick as originally conceived of 30
years ago."
So what exactly has gone wrong, and what needs to change to make the next 25
years a smoother ride for Silicon Valley's trolley line?
Bumpy start
The VTA system, which cost $2 billion to build and $66 million per year to
operate, is one of the most inefficient light-rail lines in the nation:
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Compared with the U.S. average, each VTA light-rail vehicle costs 30 percent
more to operate and carries 30 percent fewer passengers.
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The cost to carry one passenger round trip, $11.74, is 83 percent more than
the U.S. average and the third worst in the nation, ahead of only trains in
Pittsburgh and Dallas.
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Taxpayers subsidize 85 percent of the service, the second worst rate in the
nation.
The network that officials envisioned in the 1970s and '80s wound up being
twice the size, more expensive, less efficient and less popular than first
thought.
"It is an unmitigated disaster and a waste of taxpayer money," said VTA
critic Tom Rubin, a transportation consultant based in Oakland. "I think the
original concept was very seriously flawed."
Still, light-rail supporters argue the trains have put a dent in Silicon
Valley's notoriously nasty freeway traffic, providing more than 32,000 one-way
trips each day. For perspective, if all those riders drove on Highway 101 in the
South Bay, traffic would increase more than 6 percent.
"If we didn't have the current system, we would have terminal gridlock," said
the train's godfather, Rod Diridon, a transit advocate who pushed for the
network as a county supervisor decades ago.
Reasons are clear
Still, VTA light rail has struggled -- and it's mostly because of the
valley's sprawl, transportation experts and agency officials say.
Connolly noted that the South Bay's first light-rail line was built along
onion fields, where planners had expected homes and businesses to pop up along
the route. That contrasted with the strategy in most other cities, which is to
put light rail along existing, dense corridors.
For the most part, the density never materialized in Silicon Valley. As
Connolly spoke at VTA headquarters along its main light-rail line on First
Street, he noted the orange groves across the street.
"In our case we tried to graft a big-city transit type of mode onto a
suburban environment, and it's still kind of a work in progress," Connolly
said.
San Francisco's Muni light-rail system, which carries five times as many
passengers as VTA, features dense housing and jobs near stations that riders can
walk to, avoiding traffic jams and the huge parking costs.
More commuters in the South Bay, on the other hand, stomach awful traffic and
record gas prices because the region offers plenty of free parking, and its
businesses and homes are spread out. And that's not changing any time soon.
"Changing land-use patterns is something that is
hard work and takes a long time and a lot of political will. It happens in an
incremental way, property by property," said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director
of SPUR, a Bay Area planning nonprofit.
Riding the rails
Many riders say they use light rail because they don't have any other way to
get around -- and they like that it's clean, affordable and consistent.
"It's very convenient for me," said Mark
Vindiola, 47, who takes the train from his home in Milpitas to school and work
because he doesn't drive. "I'm happy it's there and I want (the service) to
continue."
But their main complaint is speed, which is often less than 10 mph in
downtown San Jose.
"It just takes a while to get through downtown," said Sabrina Baca, 17, as
she sat on the train with 18-year-old Fernando Fernandez and their 7-month-old
daughter. Asked why they and most people ride the train, the couple said, in
unison: "Because they have to."
Light rail is generally less economically efficient than long-haul heavy
train service such as BART or Caltrain, though San Jose's system is especially
feeble.
Light-rail agencies in Minneapolis, Houston, Newark, N.J., and Phoenix each
run less service than VTA yet carry more passengers than the South Bay's
network. Several cities that are much smaller than San Jose -- from St. Louis to
Salt Lake City to Portland, Ore. -- also feature light-rail systems with more
riders than VTA.
Sacramento -- which also opened its light-rail network in 1987, operates with
approximately the same level of service and runs through a similarly
sprawled-out region -- carries nearly 40 percent more passengers per day than
VTA.
Connolly pointed out that the Sacramento line has a built-in customer base of
state workers who take the line, at a 75 percent discount, to their jobs. The
closest VTA has to that: San Jose State students, who make up a large chunk of
VTA's riders largely because the line carries students to the university for no
additional charge, a cost built into their tuition.
Another issue is that San Jose's downtown -- while denser than most parts of
Silicon Valley -- is still not the jobs destination seen in the urban cores of
other cities. For many riders, it's a place to get through, not to.
Future changes coming?
Acknowledging the need to improve, the VTA is undergoing a $27 million
project to make the service more attractive, largely by adding tracks to launch
express trains. VTA is also kicking off an efficiency effort to cut service
costs 5 percent, which could help land new grants from the Metropolitan
Transportation Commission, the Bay Area's transportation agency.
Expansions to Los Gatos and East San Jose are also proposed, but those, too,
are forecast to attract very few riders and carry large, unfunded capital
costs.
"In general, we can't lose sight of the fact
that we have to do the basics better," Connolly said. "We have to be faster, we
have to connect with better destinations."
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