Voters will decide future of BART in November

VTA adds measure to upcoming ballot

By Daniel Hindin

The half-cent transportation tax that would extend BART to the South Bay has finally found its way onto this November's ballot. But the plan now will require two-thirds of Santa Clara County voters' support.

If four of the five members of the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors had voted the 25-year plan onto the ballot on Aug. 8, a simple majority approval by voters would have done the trick. But only three supervisors supported the current plan, sending Valley Transportation Authority officials back to the drawing board. However, VTA did not give up so quickly. They held a special meeting Aug.9, approving the addition of a new 30-year plan by a vote of 11-1. Blanca Alvarado, chair of the VTA and one of the county supervisors who voted against the original plan, was the lone dissenter.

The new plan proposes bringing BART to Milpitas, San Jose and Santa Clara; building a rail connection from San Jose Airport to BART, Caltrain and light rail; providing new vehicles for disabled access and senior safety, and clean air buses; expanding and converting Caltrain to electrification; and increasing rail and bus services. Local improvements would most likely include major repairs to the Lawrence Expressway and a Mary Avenue overpass on Highways 237 and 101.

Complaints by the Bay Area Transportation and Land Use Coalition (BATLUC) and Peninsula Rail 2000 call for more citizen and community participation in the plan and more improvements of bus transit. A new study by BATLUC, released on July 31, contends that 84 percent of the VTA riders use the bus system.

Peninsula Rail 2000 Board Director Andrew Chow says that a BART extension is not the most efficient and certainly not the most economic solution to the transit problem. He argues that a major expansion of the current Caltrain rail system would be a cheaper, more effective and quicker solution to the county's congestion problem.

Sunnyvale City Councilman Manny Valerio, vice chair of the VTA board, said of last week's VTA special meeting, "I'm pleased to see that the VTA board agreed, almost unanimously, to place the measure on the ballot. This lets the voters decide what they want."

VTA faces great odds now that the vote requires a two-thirds super-majority. Successful general transportation sales taxes in 1984, 1992 and 1996 received 56, 54 and 52 percent of the vote, respectively. Just two of 34 previous sales tax measures for transportation statewide have passed with a two-thirds vote.

"I am confident that there will be an educational campaign. I am sure that given the economic climate and traffic congestion, the citizens will take a long hard look at the measure," Valerio said. "Although two-thirds is a significant hurdle, I am cautiously optimistic that it will pass."

At a VTA meeting last week, San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales released a poll conducted between July 30 and Aug. 1, that showed 76 percent of county voters would vote in favor of a 30-year tax.

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