The Bay Area of California is being depopulated. Large corporations and regular families are fleeing the area. The cost of housing is the highest in the nation, the traffic is terrible and government education is based on hate and junk science. Graduates are barely able to fill taco shells and in twelve years not been taught to think for themselves.
The government transportation systems are losing billions every year and the deficits are growing. Folks are working remotely from their homes, so do not need to be on a disease and crime ridden, dirty train or bus that might or might not get them to work on time. For several years prior to the scamdemic ridership has fallen. Now the unions and greedy corporations are looking to steal billions more to continue building a failed government transportation system—oh, they might have the next phase done in 12 years—when almost nobody will be willing to be a crime victim on a government train.
“Shiny new BART stations in the South Bay are now hushed mausoleums representing a bygone era of workday commuters. Weeds sprout in commuter lots that are largely abandoned. VTA light rail trains serve desolate office parks. And at rush hour Caltrain’s double-decker coach screeches to a halt with windows of empty seats.
To save money it should be sold for parts now, housing and small businesses should be built instead.
Once bustling stations that catered to tech commuters now resemble hushed mausoleums
By ELIYAHU KAMISHER, Bay Area News Group, 2/20/22
At the North Concord BART station, an intercom rings out the arrival of a roaring train – but no one is there to hear it.
The platform is deserted on a Friday afternoon, as trains come and go, except for a handful of lonely passengers who eventually trickle down the stairs.
“I didn’t get off at the right station,” explained a slightly annoyed Dalton Fine, who sailed past his stop while absorbed in a work call. “So that’s why I’m here right now.”
This Contra Costa County stop squeezed between rolling green hills and suburban homes isn’t BART’s only sleepy station. From the East Bay to San Francisco to the heart of Silicon Valley, the Bay Area’s once-bustling transit network is a skeleton of its former self.
Shiny new BART stations in the South Bay are now hushed mausoleums representing a bygone era of workday commuters. Weeds sprout in commuter lots that are largely abandoned. VTA light rail trains serve desolate office parks. And at rush hour Caltrain’s double-decker coach screeches to a halt with windows of empty seats.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – February 03: During the evening commute, several passengers occupy one of the Caltrain cars while the train waits to depart from the Mountain View Station on Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022, in Mountain View, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
These are symbols of a pandemic-era ridership crisis. Despite widespread vaccinations, the Bay Area is among the slowest metro regions in the nation to get passengers back aboard buses and trains. Kept afloat by $3.9 billion in federal relief funds that are certain to evaporate, a system that thrived off commuters faces an uncertain future and may never again see the crowds of riders it was built to serve.
Among the sleepiest transit corridors are BART’s Dublin and Pleasanton stations in the East Bay with over 80% ridership losses. In Sunnyvale, the Valley Transportation Authority’s Moffett Park Station sees about 22 people a weekday, a 95% loss from pre-pandemic numbers. Meanwhile, Caltrain’s once-mighty commuter rail into downtown San Francisco has dwindled from 20,000 riders each day to 1,400 passengers – a 93% loss.
Tech workers flee BART
For BART, the ridership downturn is most severe in its newest stations in the South Bay: Milpitas and Berryessa, which both opened in the summer of 2020, and Warm Springs in Fremont all have over 85% fewer riders than they saw or were projected to have before the pandemic.
This over $3 billion stretch of rail – hailed as finally bringing BART to San Jose after decades of toil – is the least-used three-station BART segment. It’s a dismal accolade for a rail system that is already in last place for ridership recovery among ten of its peers, including in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., but is barreling ahead with a planned $6.9 billion extension through downtown San Jose.
Milpitas has a large atrium-style roof that lets sun cascade onto the vacant platform. The station is supposed to be BART’s “gateway to Silicon Valley” with a direct connection to tech-heavy job centers and hundreds of new apartment units surrounding the station.
MILPITAS, CA – February 02: A passenger waits to board a BART train at the Milpitas BART Station on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022, in Milpitas, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
“It’s vacant and it’s quite spacious,” said Jay Shaw, an IT worker, who was making a now-rare commute from the Milpitas BART into San Francisco. “Right now it’s a joy ride.”
Kathy Tolentino, a manager at the nearby Edge Apartments, said her complex, which opened in October, is quickly filling with tenants but they are not using the station next door. The only thing keeping many of her residents in the Bay Area while they work from home are contracts with tech employers that require them to stay, she said. “A lot of my residents would live in Texas if they could.”
The pandemic upends VTA’s light rail
At times the VTA light rail’s Orange Line running from the Milpitas BART to Mountain View is so quiet that it is easy to forget it served nearly 16,000 “boardings” every weekday in January 2020.
On a recent Thursday, the train cruised through massive office sprawls in Sunnyvale as a couple, lulled by the train’s gentle rocking, slowly fell asleep on each other’s shoulders.
The Orange Line was by far the VTA’s most-used light rail line before the pandemic, but saw an 85% reduction in ridership and is now tied for the least-used of the system’s three lines. A string of stations on the Orange Line, like Moffett Park, which serves Google and Amazon offices, has over 90% ridership losses.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – February 02: A lone passenger rides the VTA Light Rail’s Orange Line during the evening commute in Mountain View, Calif., on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Nearby, the Bayshore NASA station is having something of a recovery – it serves about eight people a day, up from three last year – but that’s still fewer than the number of wild turkeys that have taken roost at the NASA research facility.
“Work from home is really killing transit ridership,” said Jay Tyree, a service planning manager at VTA. While the VTA hopes that more housing and retail developments around the Orange Line can coax more riders, in the short term he said there isn’t much the agency can do. “The thing about light rail is once you put the tracks in the ground, it’s fixed.”
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, who also sits on the VTA board, is calling for a drastic change to the system. He says VTA should replace the light rail with a fleet of electric buses to more easily adapt to changing travel patterns – a years-long transition that would likely carry a hefty price tag. Currently, the VTA is investing over $450 million to extend the Orange Line from Alum Rock Station to the Eastridge Transit Center in East San Jose.
“It’s not a poor system. It’s a colossally bad system,” said Liccardo. “And we’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars to expand it as we speak.”
Spacious parking but no cars
In a windswept VTA commuter lot in South San Jose, four-foot weeds have had time to sprout from cracks in the asphalt and go through an entire life cycle. They’re now crunchy and dried out, standing as withered testaments to a parking lot with no cars.
SAN JOSE, CA –Lack of parking used to be a frequent complaint among BART commuters; now the system’s over 50,000 parking spots are largely empty. Fremont’s Warm Springs BART station has resorted to renting out its vast parking lot to Tesla for its car-commuting employees. At the Milpitas station, an electronic sign advertised nearly 1,000 open spaces on a recent Thursday.
“It used to be hard to park here. People used to park out in the street,” said Ed Brennan, as he pointed out dozens of empty spots at the North Concord BART station. “Now there’s nobody here.”
Across the Bay Area’s vast transit network, riders who have returned are reshaping the way public transit is used in the Bay Area. Rail that served commuters is decimated, but lines that cater to people’s everyday needs, like shopping and visiting family, are seeing far faster recovery.
That bucket of riders includes Lucas Rojas, who has not owned a car in years. In November 2018, he fled from the deadly Camp Fire in Paradise with just a backpack of belongings, and today he is a daily rider of the VTA light rail’s Green Line, which takes 30 minutes to his job at the Bay 101 Casino.
“I use it for my everyday life, not just work,” said Rojas, who was lounging with a book in hand.
“I don’t know what I would do without it,” Chanelle Vargas agreed from the seat behind him. Her 5-year-old daughter is such a frequent rider that she calls out the colors of the train lines from her stroller every time they board.
Prior to the pandemic, the VTA’s Green Line, which runs through downtown San Jose to Diridon Station and onto Campbell, was the system’s least-used. Daily ridership is still low at about 2,300 boardings, but as of January 2022, its ridership recovery rate of 34% is the highest across the three lines – more than double the techie-oriented Orange Line.
“Remote work will change things,” said Jason Baker, vice president at Silicon Valley Leadership Group, an employer advocacy group, which has pushed for more public transit funding. “But as we come out of this pandemic it’s important to not lose focus on the importance of transit for not only the environment but for healthy, happy communities.”
Transit planners are seeing that without work commutes, transit is often serving shorter trips. The trend is magnified in bus services that are outpacing rail lines in recovery. AC Transit’s 1T line, which received its own bus lane during the pandemic on International Boulevard in Oakland and San Leandro, is seeing a 99% ridership recovery, with nearly 11,000 daily riders as of November.
“If they cut transit service that would devastate my schedule,” said Coleman, a San Jose State student who rides VTA buses and light rail to his student teaching jobs. “I couldn’t do anything without it.”
