VTA is able to spend $500 million of taxpayer cash to attach a prepare station to San Jose Mineta Worldwide Airport, ignoring a second choice that might value one-tenth of that worth. The plan is to attach San Jose’s Diridon Station to San Jose’s Mineta Airport. Whereas each the airport and the Diridon Station are in San Jose, the 2 are separated by 4.1 miles. VTA’s proposal is to dig a four-mile tube below town. This may make sense if it had been the one choice.
It's not. Immediately throughout the road from the airport is the Santa Clara Transit Station. For $40-to-$50 million, a connection from the Santa Clara station to the airport would require one undercrossing and a fleet of above-ground trolleys. Our group has timed the Santa Clara choice and located that this answer would beat a commuters’ time to the airport by 10-Quarter-hour when in comparison with the Diridon choice.
With this $500 million choice, Peninsula commuters would view Mineta airport as they whisked by and continued for 4 extra miles, solely to be “tubed” again to the airport. With the Santa Clara Transit station choice, all commuters would get off immediately throughout Coleman Avenue and take a 10-minute trolley trip to Terminal A.
It’s insane. However that is what we get when a metropolis plans a regional answer. The one justification for this waste is that the answer stays totally within the confines of San Jose. It’s no surprise — 65% of the teams or members represented on the VTA “neighborhood” oversight committee represented or had curiosity within the metropolis of San Jose. Santa Clara had one member.
After a number of irritating VTA conferences, our crew started discussions with the Division of Transportation in Washington D.C. Senior DOT advisors and challenge improvement leads agreed that the Santa Clara Practice Station seems to be the best hub for the airport on account of its proximity to the airport. The DOT doesn't view this as a San Jose or Santa Clara challenge. It views this as a problem of what answer would scale back visitors, enhance transit ridership and supply one of the best worth to Bay Space taxpayers.
Santa Clara’s downtown is about to be superbly rebuilt. Housing shall be a significant a part of the “above-retail” plan. Extra transit housing shall be constructed between the brand new downtown and the Santa Clara Transit Station — true transit housing that can lastly present our first responders, academics and hospital employees with the power to dwell within the area they work and be inside strolling distance to a significant transit hub. In flip, they might be most probably to make the most of Ace, Caltrain, BART and high-speed rail to get to their locations of labor.
Our group will not be advocating for the substitute of the Diridon Hub; San Jose can construct a curler coaster to the airport. Our focus is on a 50-100 yr transit choice that would offer one of the best answer to cut back day by day Bay Space automotive journeys and to take action intelligently. That is the Santa Clara Transit Hub.
VTA shall be discussing the connector within the close to future. We ask that you simply attend this dialogue and ask VTA and our state and federal representatives why a significant prepare station ¼ mile away from the Mineta Worldwide Airport will not be being utilized to extend Bay Space regional ridership and cut back our South Bay visitors nightmare. It’s time for VTA to have a look at what’s finest for the South Bay and never only one metropolis. We will save a 10-minute commute and $450 million.
Dan Ondrasek is co-chair of the Santa Clara citizen volunteer group Reclaiming Our Downtown.