The Loma Prietan
October 2002
The Truth About Measure B
by Irvin Dawid
This fall, two transportation measures will appear on the Santa Clara County ballot by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA).
Measure A is a purely advisory question asking for a reaffirmation of the VTA's long-range transportation plan, largely based on the Measure A passed by the voters two years ago.
Measure B is a slippery-crafted measure that makes it appear that a "yes" vote will be voting to "ease traffic congestion without raising taxes"—who wouldn't vote "yes"?
A more honestly worded version of this measure would be: "Shall the people of Santa Clara County restrict virtually all flexible funds that the VTA receives from State and Federal sources for the next 34 years to roads only, thus to deny any of these funds to transit?" This is exactly what Measure B would do. (Flexible funds can be spent on roads or transit.)
To understand how such an environmentally unfriendly and unbalanced transportation measure could be placed before the voters, one must go back two years to the 2000 Measure A, dubbed the "BART Tax"—a measure that devoted 100% of its projects to transit. For the time being, disregard whether those projects were cost-effective, sound projects—that issue was decided in 2000.
Since the VTA is statutorily restricted to raising funds (through tax measures) for transit, bicycle, and pedestrian projects only, they could not allocate as much of the Measure A revenue to road projects, as they would have liked to. So their Board of Directors passed a resolution stating that, to pay for road projects, 100% of the flexible funding they received from state and federal sources, lumped together in what is called the State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) funds, would go to roads for the duration of the Measure A tax (to the year 2036).
There was no need for this resolution. The VTA has historically devoted most of their STIP funds to road projects. This resolution was passed for purely political means—to show the voters that roads would continue to be funded. More importantly, this is how they hoped to convince the road-builders not to mount a campaign against the BART measure.
Other counties, such as San Francisco, devote 100% of their STIP funding to transit, yet they do not have a resolution stating that this must be done. The funds are simply allocated to the projects of the highest importance, as any reasonable transportation agency would be expected to do.
Returning to the current Measure B, this measure will make that bad resolution permanent, i.e. it could only be "undone" by another vote of the people. This measure unduly ties the hands of future VTA boards to react to unforeseen emergencies. For example, if, as many transit experts predict, the BART project exceeds its budgeted costs of $3.9 billion, the VTA will not be able to use those STIP funds to make up the shortfall. Rather, the shortfall will come from funds intended for the actual projects that were listed in the 2000 Measure A, e.g. bus, Caltrain, and light rail improvements. These are the projects that the VTA promised the voters two years ago. The other place that the VTA will be forced to look for funds (in the event of a cost overrun or revenue shortfall) will be the current bus and light rail service. Rather than using possible state and federal funds, the VTA would be forced to cut bus and light rail service, and of course, raise fares. This is the future of transit in Santa Clara County if Measure B passes.
To put it quite simply, Measure B is bad for the environment, bad for a balanced transportation system, and perhaps most importantly, bad for effective government.
To view the measures on-line, see www.sccvote.org/e45_lom.htm
Irvin Dawid is the Transportation Committee co-chair of the Loma Prieta Chapter.
He is a candidate for a Master of Urban Planning degree with an emphasis in urban transportation planning at San Jose State University.