Nice to see VTA focusing on running things (vs. building things) for a change.

One problem with the proposed bus network is that it treats Palo Alto as a terminal for the bus lines. VTA should really cooperate with SamTrans to increase ridership between South San Mateo County and North Santa Clara County. Maybe some jointly operated buses between say Mountain View/SunnyVale and Menlo Park/Redwood City ?

Stupid asses. I can walk the 2mi to downtown mountain view, from Monta Loma, faster than VTA's crap show can take me there.

"Well, I guess no ones riding our poorly routed ghost busses! Let's just cancel them in mountain view!"

Here's a thought: instead of noodling service from nowhere, TO nowhere, why not ask "where do people live?" followed by "where do those people go?"

But VTA's real mission is to make north county lives harder and funnel money into San Jose + Santa Clara at every opportunity.

As the consultant discussed in this article, ("VTA considers complete bus overhaul") I want to assure your readers that this story is almost entirely false and fabricated. There is no proposed new network. There are three alternatives for public discussion, from which the Voice arbitrarily picked one.

The whole point of the process is that VTA wants to hear from citizens about how they would make the difficult trade-offs that the agency faces.

I explained this very clear to the Voice reporter, so there is no excuse for the hysterical fear-mongering in this article and its sub-headline.

We have already written to the Voice demanding a retraction and apology.

Citizens who want to understand what's really going on are encouraged to download our very readable "Choices Report". A link can be found at the bottom of the VTA New Network website, which is easily googled.

Readers who want to understand our work are encouraged to explore my website jarrettwalker dot com and my blog humantransit dot org. After this episode, I'd advise readers to trust nothing that the Voice writes about this issue.

Take a look at VTA's measure A website.
Web Link

Measure A, you'll recall, is the .5 cent sales tax we all pay in order to fund transit improvements. One of the eligible uses for Measure A sales tax revenues is "Funding operating and maintenance costs for increased bus, rail and paratransit services."

Unfortunately, in reality, all of the Measure A money is going down the BART sinkhole. It wasn't enough so we had to pass another tax, the 2008 Measure B. That STILL isn't enough and we'll face another sales tax proposition on the November ballot.

Vote NO.

As someone who lives in the poorly served Palo Alto area, this is not going to be popular if they expect any increase in funds from our taxes to pay for this.

Gunn high school has a large number of students who depend on a VTA bus to get to school. This proposes scrapping it. What will that do to Palo Alto traffic? A large number of students need to get to Foothill college. Already that means somehow getting to Mountain View to take a bus that is often too full to take all the passengers waiting. Palo Alto needs a route to Foothill also.

A useful bus route gets people to their destinations without snaking around neighborhoods. If we don't have school buses, then VTA has to take up the slack or else we are going to have myriads of extra cars on the streets just as one example.

And the idea that Palo Alto is a boundary makes no sense. There are just as many people in North Palo Alto that need to commute to places like Mountain View as there are people in South Palo Alto (or Mountain View) that need to commute to Menlo Park or Redwood City. The fact that there is a Berlin Wall between San Mateo and Santa Clara counties as far as transportation and city cooperation is concerned does not help anyone at all.

The extension of BART to San Jose does absolutely nothing to help transportation in north Santa Clara County. The fact that we are expected to pay extra taxes to support this extension and then to suffer a reduced VTA service serves to prove that Santa Clara County cares nothing about the north part of the county apart from a tax dollar base.

Disgraceful attitude.

@Scott, following on to Mr. Walker's post, the three concepts highlight different goals under a fixed budget: Network 90 has a 90% ridership goal and a 10% coverage goal; Network 80 is 80% ridership goal and 20% coverage goal; and Network 70 is 70% ridership and 30% coverage. If you think current VTA service is "from nowhere TO nowhere", you would probably prefer the Network 90 concept. VTA claims their current scheduling targets a 70/30 balance. (Web Link

We are very lucky to have J.Walker and his expert team working for us to improve the VTA network, and I am hopeful that good things will come of it.

Speaking personally, I think the right thing is to prioritize ridership fully, and the Network 90 map would best meet that goal. Per Mr. Walker's comment, our cities need to build more housing and office around transit options if we want those transit options to work. Prioritizing coverage is a lost cost in a sprawling community, the budget we would need to support a reasonable degree of service would be enormous.

Fortunately in Mountain View, we have several major opportunities to do just that (in particular North Bayshore and San Antonio), and our Council is in relative alignment. I would like to see us go further in San Antonio, with residential buildings between 12-15 stories tall (rather than the max proposed 8 stories)

Per the Network 90 option within Mountain View, I find route 40 to be a bit strange-- it is important to connect Foothill to a transit hub (San Antonio or Castro), and it is important to connect a transit hub to North Bayshore, but most of the trip to Foothill runs through extremely low density. If we split the route into two parts, perhaps we could get higher frequency scheduling where it matters most while keeping costs down. (However, I will add that I know next to nothing about the ridership patterns of the current route)

@bjd, the problem with the #40 is that it's pretty weak as a feeder to regional transit services. It missed the San Antonio station of Caltrain and it goes nowhere near the light rail terminal in Mountain View. It does cross Caltrain's line at Rengstorff, where, ironically, there used to be a Caltrain stop.

The VTA is a bureaucracy out to increase its income and power. Transportation is just a sideline.And the VTA will have another tax measure on the November ballot. Reminds me of the movie "The Blob."

Mr Jarrett--

Your complaint seems to be at odds with VTA's positioning on the matter. They call it the "Next Network". That sounds more like a complete overhaul to me! They are shamelessly trying to make the case that they need more funding so they can continue the current level of service. They are "considering" drastic cuts for some areas, for sure. The article just says that. It's true.

But you are right that they aren't following the choices in your report. They are biasing it in favor of their past history and limiting consideration to just 3 variations on the same old story. For example, one change that they could make would be to decrease spacing of stops on one of their biggest routes, the 522. There is no proof that going from 2 mile to 1 mile between stops would fail to increase ridership. It almost certainly would increase ridership. They are overlooking this VERY SIMPLE change. Then they could even eliminate the 22 service as it has existed for decades, replacing the long haul trips with the 522. Multiple local routes at frequencies and service windows to be determined could then serve various areas up and down the 522 route. I think this would be a big cost cutting measure and yield increased ridership. They don't need a service like 22 paralleling 522 the entire 30 mile length! That's their biggest waste.

@bjd you want to take the buildings to 15 stories. Great. And then let's just rename Mountain View to Building View.

Sad.

Forgive me for violating NIMBY orthodoxy, but I'm more excited about a denser, more inclusive, less unaffordable community with more walking, biking, and mass transit to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, than I am frightened by hellish sight of a 15-story building.

In the third paragraph it states (paraphrased) that population has increased accompanied by a "plunge in the number of bus riders."
These facts, if facts they are, do not support more buses on the roads.
Those of us who prefer peace and quiet are sick and tired of new tenements and glass cages going up which create the traffic mess.
Enough is enough!

@JH,

What you are describing sounds like San Francisco.

But San Francisco already exists. Why make Mountain View into that?

We are in the growing pains to becoming a bigger small city, and I think we all understand that; and we each have to come to terms with our reluctance. But I think urban metropolis is going too far.

We're just not prepared for that, in terms of infrastructure, roads, placement of residential and commercial, demographics, and yes personal feelings and dispositions too.