Published Thursday, November 8, 2001, in the San Francisco Chronicle

San Jose BART looking pricier
Mayor says sales tax may need to rise again

Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer

A year to the day after Santa Clara County residents voted to tax
themselves to bring BART to the South Bay, San Jose Mayor Ron
Gonzales raised the possibility yesterday of seeking another sales
tax increase to pay for running the extension.

Officials are hopeful that the county's Valley Transportation
Authority can tap other sources -- including fares -- to raise the
$48 million a year it has agreed to pay BART to operate and maintain
the 16-mile extension. BART officials insisted on the annual payment
to prevent taxpayers in other areas served by the system from having
to subsidize an extension to San Jose and Santa Clara.

Gonzales said the Valley Transportation Authority will try to make
its operations more efficient and boost ridership on the buses and
light-rail system it runs in Santa Clara County. But if that doesn't
raise enough money, he said, the authority would consider "as a last
resort, going to the voters to ask for another sales tax."

Santa Clara County voters overwhelmingly approved a 30-year, half-
cent sales tax increase last November that is expected to raise $6
billion for a package of transportation improvements -- including $2
billion for BART.

Another alternative, albeit one that officials would turn to
reluctantly, would be reductions in light-rail and bus service to pay
for the BART line. A transit advocacy group predicted that was a
likely outcome of the Valley Transportation Authority's financial
commitment.

"VTA has boxed itself into a corner by promising something it
couldn't deliver," said Stuart Cohen, executive director of the Bay
Area Transportation and Land Use Coalition. "Bus and light-rail
service will be on the chopping block if Santa Clara County cannot
come up with additional taxpayer money."

Gonzales said the authority expects to cover the costs without
dipping into money used to run buses and light rail.

The agreement calls for the authority to guarantee payment of a share
of BART's operating costs. The guarantee is in the form of a lien
against the authority's annual allotment of federal transit funds.

Despite the controversy over the annual subsidy, Bay Area politicians
and officials from BART and the transportation authority hailed the
agreement yesterday, calling it a milestone toward extending BART
into Santa Clara County, perhaps as soon as 2010.

If ratified by the boards of both transit agencies as well as county
transportation authorities and the Metropolitan Transportation
Commission, the deal would make a South Bay BART extension the Bay
Area's top priority for federal transit funding.

Santa Clara County voters and the state have raised all but $834
million of the estimated $3.8 billion cost of building the extension,
and getting the rest of the money from Congress will be the next big
chore.

Gonzales and Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, said yesterday that with
the agreement, and with roughly three-quarters of the project paid
for with state and local money, BART to San Jose stands a good chance
of winning the funding it needs.

BART officials said the agreement also protects the transit
district's taxpayers in Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco
counties from having to pay any of the costs of a South Bay extension.

It calls for the transportation authority to build the extension
south from BART's planned Warm Springs extension, and to cover all
construction costs. The authority must also pay BART for any costs it
causes to the existing system -- ranging from extra fare gates and
rail cars to a new train control system.

"It's very good for the existing BART counties," said BART Director
Dan Richard. "They're going to get additional transit service with no
cost impact."

E-mail Michael Cabanatuan at mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com.