Measure B - Can anything be sold with the letters BART?

Santa Clara County has some lovely ballot measures from VTA to vote on this election. Perhaps the most ridiculous is Measure C, which asks voters to approve a plan that is not yet written. (And then Measure D, saying "we're so bad at doing these plans that we should just stop asking for approval.) However as far as waste is concerned, Measure B wins out. The county is asking for a sales tax increase to cover the cost of operating a short BART extension from Fremont to Santa Clara via San Jose. Actual distance between the county line and Santa Clara is less than 10 miles. Add in the San Jose loop and it gets a few miles longer. This corridor is already served by ACE trains, Amtrak trains, and a VTA express bus (running at about 15 minute headways.) The cost estimate for building the train line is now in the neighborhood of $5 billion dollars. (Also on the ballot, Prop. 1A authorizes $10 billion in bonds for high speed rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles. If if all those funds are matched 2:1, that would still be a small fraction of the cost of the train to Fremont. And it would produce trains that run faster and at shorter headways than BART)

Even though building the extension is lightly to consume way too much money - money that could be spent on actually providing transportation that people use - this measure is not about that. This measure is about taxing ourselves to provide money for operating this beast. Apparently, it will have so few riders, that a huge subsidy is in order. (Perhaps they have realized that all recent BART extensions have come in over budget and under estimated ridership.) And this is for something that only serves a brief section of the county. (Though VTA somehow justifies this because it connects to caltrain. (They most not realize that Caltrain already connects with BART at Millbrae - in the last 'white elephant' adventure in BART construction.)

The audacity of this is that they sell it as a way to "reduce traffic congestion." And its unfortunate that most people buy this. Though, they figure that congestion will be reduced by 'other people' taking transit, thus leaving more space on the road for them. Unfortunately, the building environment is still such that their are limited destinations easily accessible from transit. The parking lots at BART stations attest to that. Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco are the only reasonable destinations. And these are a long ways away; and for most people, caltrain would still be faster.

If we were really serious about transit, we should actually start building pedestrian-friendly development near existing transit lines. With some of the money being talking about for train lines, why not pay people not to drive? It would likely be cheaper, and lead to greater reduction in traffic congestion.