Reconfirming why your Editorial Board has called for VTA’s
termination, with the new VTA transportation plan (front page
9/10/10), and confirming again why the taxpayers have sued to
enforce their constitutional rights,
 VTA/COG’s leadership shows us why VTA earned
”
worst in the Nation
”
status in the Massachusettes Institute of Technology study of
all the Nation’s transit agencies.
Dear Editor,
Reconfirming why your Editorial Board has called for VTA’s termination, with the new VTA transportation plan (front page 9/10/10), and confirming again why the taxpayers have sued to enforce their constitutional rights, VTA/COG’s leadership shows us why VTA earned “worst in the Nation” status in the Massachusettes Institute of Technology study of all the Nation’s transit agencies. COG’s board are fools for entering the “mobility partnership,” as I told them from their podium on numerous occasions. Merced County ought to re-think its decision, or else VTA may have them on the same ruinous course they’re taking COG.
With disdain and apparently contempt for Gilroy motorists and taxpayers in San Benito County, the new plan would reroute Hwy. 152 through San Benito County, and collect tolls from all cars and trucks on a per mile basis by automated sensors embedded on all vehicles like GPS systems. All in conjunction with the Bullet Train construction, the biggest waste of taxpayers’ money in state history. The current price tag on Bullet Train exceeds $163 billion, with annual operating subsidies required from California’s taxpayers in the range of $4 billion per year. The VTA/COG estimate of $1.2 billion for construction of their “F-Gilroy Plan” seems small in comparison, yet by routing it through SBC it means that we’ll wait for centuries for that rural, relatively impoverished County to raise the money for the road construction work.
So, with VTA earning a failing grade in MIT Study of VTA and its peers, VTA is now going to pass their “F” along to Gilroy and South County and SBC. Improvements to the Tenth Street Exit must wait under their “F Gilroy Plan,” even though they have billions to spend on boondoggles like Lite Rail and BART-to-San Jose. Their plan, if our elected leaders are crazy enough to adopt it, would create what NAFTA refers to as a “barrier to trade” by deterring cars and trucks, thus lessening economic activity here on the Central Coast Region. No wonder they kept they’re meetings a secret, hidden from the public and the press, until the taxpayers obtained the Attorney General’s Opinion and sued them to obey the Sunshine in Government Act (“Brown Act”). Once again VTA shows why the County Grand Jury has indicted the VTA for governance flaws, taxpayer abuse, and fiscal irresponsibility twice in the past five years. Yet our leaders let them flip us the single finger salute as they plow ahead with the same damaging policy. How long will we allow them to do this to us? We must terminate VTA & COG, unconstitutional joint power authorities circumventing democratic government in this region, ASAP.
Joseph Thompson, Tres Pinos
