Read the article, below. This is absurd! A divorce? The exact opposite
should be happening.
1. There needs to be a single, coherent management system in the Bay
Area that includes and integrates all modes of urban mass transit.
Certainly not competing and conflicting ones.
2. This unified system must be more tax based, like a public utility,
rather than the present collection of semi-private businesses. Once tax
based, it must be much more publicly accountable.
3. As we've said before, when such a system becomes more convenient for
getting from point A to point B, people will begin to use their cars
less and this transit system more.
4. We have also identified in prior emails the criteria for such an
effective/convenient system and pointed out that unless all the
necessary attributes are in place, it simply will under-perform.
5. What we have now is a mindless "war of the bureaucrats."

(Remember, SamTrans incorporates Caltrain and the Peninsula Joint Powers
Board.)

Martin
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SamTrans, BART to dissolve 17-year partnership
Breakup over money will benefit riders of SFO extension
By Michael Manekin, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area
Article Last Updated:02/16/2007 02:44:57 AM PST

The marriage is almost over.
After the money disputes, the public spats and numerous lawsuit threats,
SamTrans and BART are calling quits to the 17-year partnership behind
the underperforming BART-to-SFO extension.
Not to worry: The BART line - which connects Colma, South San Francisco,
San Bruno, Millbrae and San Francisco International Airport to the rest
of the Bay Area - will survive, but the relationship between SamTrans
and BART is about to end in divorce.
For some six months, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay
Area's regional transportation governing body, has tried to draw the
feuding agencies toward an amicable conclusion of their partnership.
On Wednesday morning, before the MTC's Planning and Allocations
committee, the commission came one step closer to success - and with any
luck, said transportation officials, the MTC and BART boards will
approve the agreement by the end of the month.
"In the spirit of Valentine's Day, I hope we can all move forward,"
SamTrans director Mike Scanlon told the committee Wednesday morning.
What went wrong?
Money, of course.
Under the terms of the marriage, SamTrans agreed to accept the operating
costs of the Peninsula's five-stop BART extension. That shouldn't have
been a problem: The new BART line was supposed to be one of the first
transit operations in the country to achieve more than 100 percent
fare-box revenue, essentially paying for itself through fares. For
SamTrans, the idea was to kick back and watch the money roll in.
Only, 9/11 and the subsequent dot-com bust ended that dream. Initial
daily ridership projections were pegged at 50,000. But since the line's
SFO extension arrived in 2003, it has only drawn some 30,000 riders a
day. Although both BART and SamTrans herald the line's 70 percent
fare-box recovery as an unprecedented success for Bay Area transit,
operating the extension still costs SamTrans the remaining 30 percent.
"The extension was never supposed to cost SamTrans a penny," said
SamTrans spokesman Jonah Weinberg. "Unfortunately, it has never met the
expectation that it would be wildly successful."
Not being "wildly successful" has cost SamTrans as much as $17 million a
year to run the line. Since 2003 the borderline debacle has cost the
agency
$48 million. The marriage with BART quickly soured when the two agencies
started to bicker about the amount of money which the underresourced
SamTrans had to pay annually toward operating the extension.
Last year SamTrans even capped the amount of money paid to BART at $5
million. Shortly thereafter the MTC stepped in to broker an end to the
marriage.
"We were certainly on a bad course," said Scanlon. "This (agreement) is
reasonable - and as good of a solution we could have come to in order to
deal with an extremely complex problem."
Under the terms of the divorce proceedings, SamTrans washes its hands of
the extension by allowing BART to take full control of its rail line. In
return for the trouble, BART would receive $32 million - the lion's
share of SamTrans' anticipated portion of bond money from the
voter-approved Proposition 1B. Alongside an additional $800,000 from
SamTrans' annual share of state transit funding toward BART, the funds
will go toward the construction of a BART extension to Warm Springs in
Alameda County, a project that SamTrans was supposed to have helped fund
with revenue from the money-losing extension.
In addition, the San Mateo County Transportation Authority would
continue to pay BART 2 percent, about $1.2 million a year, of the
county's half-cent sales tax toward the Warm Springs extension.
"No divorce is a good thing, but given the situation, this is the best
solution for everyone involved," Weinberg said.
While SamTrans has suffered through this difficult marriage, so have
county taxpayers and commuters. In a desperate attempt to cut some of
the costs, SamTrans has spent the last few years consolidating BART
train lines and reducing service - cutting out direct trains to Millbrae
and increasing wait times at the airport from seven to
15 minutes.
Both BART and SamTrans officials insist that handing the operating of
the extension over to BART will only benefit riders.
"Instead of being constrained by the building limitations that SamTrans
imposed," said BART spokesman Linton Johnson, "we'll be able to run the
service that the customers want." As BART conducts ridership surveys and
budget studies on the extension, service changes could arrive as early
as the fall, Johnson added.
The divorce, said Johnson, is the unfortunate result of two parents who
have "opposing viewpoints and opposing budget limitations" on how to
raise a child.
"We wanted the kid to grow up really fast and be a genius at a young
age, and (SamTrans) wanted the kids to grow up really fast, too, but
they weren't willing to pay for it," he said.
Only, Weinberg said, SamTrans has a "bunch of children to look out for "
- citing the agency's bus fleet and paratransit, plus Caltrain, which
the agency jointly funds alongside agencies in Santa Clara County and
San Francisco - and "couldn't benefit any one of our children to the
detriment of the others."
In the meantime, Weinberg said, "we wish our child to grow and prosper
now that it's left home."

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Martin Engel
1621 Stone Pine Lane
Menlo Park, CA 94025
650:323-1670
martinengel@earthlink.net
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