I get Sierra Club newsletters and was pleasantly surprised the recommend a No vote. It's almost unheard of for an environmental group to oppose a (mostly) public transit tax.

The Sierra position was well thought out...saying this VTA proposal is unspecific, and comes on top of many failures in the past. Sierra says VTA should get their act together, and then put a more well-thought-out plan on the ballot.

And this doesn't even go into the El Camino lane closure stuff.

Vote No. This isn't anti-transit. It's anti-bad plans. Come back with something better (you already have 2 taxes running now)

Clearly surprised. I'm not a big supporter of environment special interest groups but happy they are showing some rationality towards VTA .

The Sierra Club's position will take some time to verify. The single issue special interest group fighting the development of transit is putting out quite a lot of misinformation, so they are hardly a trustworthy source.

By the way, the Sierra Club does support the dedicated transit lanes. That makes sense, since they want people to get around more easily without the environmentally damaging automobile.

Web Link

The dedicated bus lanes would create far more problems than they would solve. I won't even consider voting for them until the politicians who say that they want to get people out of their cars, get out of their own cars first and begin taking public transit themselves.

As someone who has taken public transit almost exclusively for the last 5 years, I know the systems very well. VTA is in my opinion, the worst of all the transit systems between Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco. It is expensive and the routes are convoluted. The BRT lanes will be very expensive, will not significantly affect ridership, and will cause even more delays on ECR. We should not be paying for them to create more traffic problems.

Vote "NO" on measure B.


Jim Neal
Old Mountain View

The Sierra Club has become very NIMBY in recent decades. I no longer trust them on broad issues. Not familiar with the other 2 groups mentioned here.

Sierra writes "Vote No. This isn't anti-transit. It's anti-bad plans. Come back with something better (you already have 2 taxes running now)"

Just a nitpick, but VTA gets 3 taxes, not two. The third tax is a permanent one that passed in 1976. Plus, voters approved a vehicle registration fee for transportation a few years back.

I'm posting anonymously where I otherwise wouldn't, since VTA-related conversations put a lot of people into a frenzy. But, here it goes:

We need this tax rather badly. Is the VTA a perfect organization? Certainly not, I too am very frustrated with a number of their operations-- low bus ridership and a refusal to consider alternatives; the expensive redundant last leg of BART, over-focus on San Jose. But the VTA is the transit organization we have to work with, and the money is badly needed to start modernizing our transit systems, including major improvements to Caltrain, roadways, bicycle networks, and many other transit initiatives.

VTA getting 2 vs 3 taxes-- it's not all that relevant. Even this $6b is a drop in the bucket in terms of what the Bay Area needs to truly bring our transit up to speed. Really, I think we are looking at something closer to $100b to have a system people would begin to appreciate. And to clarify a point I see made on signs on our streets-- this measure has nothing to do with the El Camino BRT lanes. That project has funding, it is a matter of policy discussion at this point.

I hope we will continue to push back against the VTA, and encourage them to start thinking modern. I hope we will see a shakeup in management. But there are a number of projects that need to get started regardless of who is running the agency, and it is a bad idea to deny funding where it is sorely needed for another four years.

needs improvement is wrong. We already pay three sales taxes plus a vehicle registration fee to VTA and they refuse to live within their means. As the website points out, "VTA wants to use Measure B sales tax dollars to tunnel BART beyond the San Jose Diridon Caltrain Station to the Santa Clara Caltrain Station. This segment is already served by Caltrain and it is under capacity, while duplicating this existing service with BART is estimated to cost at least $800 million. VTA may not even be able to buy the land needed to construct a new BART station at Santa Clara, and the City of Santa Clara doesn’t support mixed-use development near the station needed to drive high transit ridership. Duplicating existing Caltrain service with BART is an incredible waste of limited sales tax dollars.

We should not reward this kind of thinking with more money.

@needs improvement, I think everyone agrees there needs to be massive improvement in transit. But needing improvement is not a free pass for "give more money to poorly run organizations". What is needed is ACCOUNTABILITY and until that happens we NEED to stop funding.

Your argument has been made for the last 40 years, it's not working. Time to pull the plug.

@mvresident2003, would love to hear your thoughts on how to create an organization that functions better than the VTA.

It's easy to get hung up on one line item you consider to be a misspend, but there are many improvements that would come from this money.

@needs improvement, there is no reason to make @mvresident2003 restate the obvious, especially since the problems with VTA are spelled out here Web Link . No reason to copy and paste, why not go to the site and tell us what's wrong with the "no" argument.

I agree with the no votes. If you go to Castro train station during rush hours, you will see all kinds of private buses transporting people. We don't need VTA for major transportation routes. The private sector is killing it and doing a better job. It's time to end VTA

Didn't we just vote on a BART tax a few years ago? Why not save money by getting rid of the SJ-Santa Clara portion?