VTA’s long awaited Southern Gateway Transportation and Land Use
Study, released by VTA in draft form for public comment by Oct. 31,
breaks new ground, breaks old rules, gives new ammunition to calls
for the end of the MPO system established with the federal
Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) in
1992.
VTA’s long awaited Southern Gateway Transportation and Land Use Study, released by VTA in draft form for public comment by Oct. 31, breaks new ground, breaks old rules, gives new ammunition to calls for the end of the MPO system established with the federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) in 1992. Not only does it stretch transport to include land use policy, it purports to reach beyond the geographical limits of VTA’s jurisdiction to embrace the entire Central California Coast Region (Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito Counties). No where in the enabling legislation can this power grab by VTA find support.
Ranked dead last among the Nation’s transit agencies, we see why they were indicted by the Grand Jury last June for governance flaws, mismanagement and waste of tax dollars.
Grading their Study overall for transport law and policy, VTA gets an “F.” Throwing out precedent, flexing dictatorial muscle, I think that VTA’s gone from worse to “worser” as its leadership is lost in radical socialist policy, dedicated to the idea that taxpayers’ wallets are a bottomless pit for endless tax subsidies, that BART to San Jose is worth any cost, that there is no limit to the amount of sales taxes that our leaders can impose, while we give away rides more expensive than those on the Supersonic Concorde with radical socialist Lite-Rail-to-Hell, and plan even more expensive ones with HSRA’s Bullet Train. VTA/SVLG leadership is lost, not in space, but in a self-defeating policy that the Soviet Union proved for all ages is both unsound and unsustainable. VTA/SVLG will tax motorists out of their cars, while Silicon Valley’s largest employers reap the benefit of having the taxpayers foot the bills so that their employees can get to and from work. Worse, we even have the taxpayers expected to subsidize transit to Walmart. Have our leaders gone mad? Transit for the wealthiest corporations in America!?!? In effect, welfare for corporate America!?!? Taxpayers paying the world’s richest people their hard-earned tax dollars. Are our leaders crazy?
This Southern Gateway Study is a confession by VTA’s lost leadership that they’ve so misdirected highway money to public-sector transit that the region suffers the consequences of their gross negligence. It is another reason why the Santa Clara County Grand Jury indictment of VTA’s leadership must not be ignored. It proves, once again, the failure of our transport policy in which we attempt the impossible: marriage of radical socialist mass transit with capitalism, free enterprise transport.
This Southern Gateway Study is confirmation that our leaders are berserk, why their schizophrenic, self-defeating policy will be damned by future generations, notwithstanding the Congress renewing it in the most-recently enacted highway bill (SAFETEALU), and successfully lobbying Congress to relax the Federal Transit Administration’s laughable transit agency efficiency standards so that VTA would have a better shot at getting federal tax dollars for BART to San Jose.
If, as the Study recommends, there must be a new freeway between the Don Pacheco Y and U.S. 101, then it ought to be constructed entirely in Santa Clara County, so that the burden for paying for it falls on the county with the most tax resources, and not on San Benito County, which is the one with the least tax resources in the Region. Santa Clara County has money to burn on such boondoggles as BART to San Jose, and Lite Rail, so it is absurd to construct a new freeway in San Benito County. Wastrels at VTA/SVLG ought to be hung out to dry in the wind, forced to examine what the Grand Jury has indicted them for, and not allowed to pass the buck for their extreme wastefulness onto the backs of their neighboring counties’ taxpayers. How can VTA, which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology study of all the Nation’s transit agencies to be the worst one in the entire Nation, expect others to accept its leadership?
The Black Hole that VTA/SVLG has constructed, its monument to Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist ideals, ought to be quarantined and restricted within the socialist bastion of Santa Clara County, and if any other County expressly desires to be infected with that fatal disease, then let them step up to the plate and help pay Santa Clara County for its lunacy. I urge the leaders who care about the future of the region to say “NO” to VTA/SVLG wastefulness.
With the rationale exposed for all to see in the study, and SAFETEALU, it’s easy to see why National Industrial Transportation League, American Road and Transportation Builders Association, the National Chamber Foundation, and others industry leaders, are calling for an end to the reign of the MPO’s before the next highway bill is debated in the Congress.
Joe Thompson is the past-president of the Gilroy-Morgan Hill Bar Association, a member of the Transportation Lawyers Association and a member of the Citizens Rail Advisory Committee for the San Benito Council of Governments. Reach him at [email protected].
