Are lavish California rail projects going out of style?

Recent state and federal action could spell trouble for three costly projects being run by transit agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a declining population and historically low ridership, agencies are trying to raise $45 billion in local, state, and federal tax revenue to kick-start projects. The best approach would be to postpone them.

The furthest of the three projects is the $9.4 billion four-station expansion of San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) rapid transit system to and through downtown San Jose. While six miles of additional track will be served by BART trains, the extension is being built by a separate agency, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA). The previous extension built by the VTA, from Alameda County to San Jose north, was delivered four years late. The two new stations added as part of this ten-mile, $2.3 billion project currently serve fewer than 2,000 exiting passengers each day.

A follow-up project, expected to provide services in 2034, is already impacting the area despite a lack of federal funding: The VTA recently voted to demolish the building, which contains eight residences and three buildings, to eventually build passenger exits and ventilation structures.

Second is the $6.7 billion Caltrain expansion to the Salesforce Transit Center in San Francisco from its current terminus on the downtown periphery. Caltrain ridership has dropped by two-thirds since 2019, so use of this 1.3-mile extension will be limited. The project is scheduled for 2032, but the previous underground transport project in the area, the Central Metro, opened four years late.

The project sponsor, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA), previously built a $2.2 billion transit center in downtown San Francisco, which had to close weeks after it officially opened due to a structural defect.

Finally, at an earlier planning stage is Link21, which will build a second tunnel under San Francisco Bay connecting Oakland to San Francisco. The project is designed for 2040, and its preliminary cost is $29 billion. But the current BART tunnel is far from being fully operational post-pandemic, and hundreds of millions have already been spent upgrading that tunnel’s signaling system so it can handle a two-minute interval instead of the 2:30 minimum train gap now. active.

These three projects are likely to have modest passenger numbers once completed, given the shift from commuting to telecommuting, which is especially noticeable in the high-tech Bay Area. And even before the pandemic, the population and ridership in the region had stopped growing due to the high cost of living in the area, as well as problems with crime and cleanliness in transport systems.

Perhaps for these reasons, state and federal officials are recognizing that bloated transit projects in the San Francisco Bay Area are not the best use of scarce taxpayer funds. California, for example, went from a $100 billion surplus to a projected $22.5 billion deficit in just one fiscal year and is looking for savings opportunities.

To help close the projected shortfall, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January budget proposal cuts capital funding for California’s transportation projects over the next three years. The money will come from the state’s Transit and Intercity Railroad Program, which funds “transformative overhauls that modernize California’s intercity, commuter, and urban rail systems,” among other projects. Some of that money would likely go to one or more megaprojects in the Bay Area.

It remains to be seen if this cut materializes. Newsom’s budget promises to restore funding if actual revenues beat projections, while Senator Scott Wiener and several of his Legislative colleagues petition Newsom to rethink the planned reduction.

Meanwhile, the East Bay Times reported that the federal Department of Transportation has refused to fund two grant proposals from the California High-Speed ​​Rail Administration totaling $1.3 billion. it’s the same past at the request to contribute $88 million towards an estimated $147 million to relocate Madera’s rail station, which currently only serves Amtrak but will also serve high-speed rail if and when the system becomes operational. The cost of the proposed station project is over $2,000 for each of Madera’s 68,000 residents.

However, these high-speed rail turnarounds cannot be permanent. Unsuccessful applications were submitted to the DOT Mega-Grant Program, which is just one of several that HSR projects can participate in. Due to the limited size of the Megaprogram, only nine of the 128 eligible programs could be funded by the federal government.

But federal decisions do not bode well for transit projects in the Bay Area. While the bipartisan infrastructure bill authorized $550 billion in new spending, only a small fraction of that amount is available for transportation projects: broadband internet access, clean drinking water and roads should all receive larger shares. And Bay Area agencies will struggle to compete with projects that have more compelling justifications.

In a recent mega-funding announcement, the feds also passed on TJPA’s initial attempt to secure funding for its Caltrain expansion, noting the lack of local revenue sources and the applicant’s lack of technical capability to carry out the project. Instead, the Department of Transportation decided to fund the replacement of dilapidated 100-year-old bridges on a commuter rail line north of Chicago, as well as a project to improve safety and add rapid bus service to Philadelphia’s Roosevelt Boulevard.

As the federal Department of Transportation announces other bidding opportunities, Bay Area transit agencies should expect to clash with other competitors across the country that have more pressing needs and projects that can benefit more people.

Bay Area transit officials often justify their expansion projects in terms of climate change. But whatever you think about the human role in warming the planet, it’s hard to argue that these three projects are a cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, their long deadlines mean that none of them will deliver any emissions savings until 2030, the year Green New Dealers previously set as the deadline to reach zero emissions. Instead, all of these projects will start much later, at a time when most Californians will be accepting the state’s upcoming ban on internal combustion engines.