SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA - DECEMBER 29: VTA General Manager Carolyn Gonot attends graduation ceremonies for new VTA bus operators, Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2021, in San Jose, Calif. The new operators will help fill a deficit of bus drivers in Santa Clara County. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
The lack of transparency and the refusal to seriously address the soaring costs of the planned BART extension through San Jose indicate the need for leadership change at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.
Under the direction of General Manager Carolyn Gonot, the authority has repeatedly misled residents and her Board of Directors about the price tag and plans for the four-station, six-mile extension for which construction has yet to begin.
Gonot, who had previously worked for VTA for 23 years, took over as general manager in July 2021 after leading the Utah Transit Authority for two years. Since her Bay Area return, the projected cost of the extension — to be built by VTA and operated by BART — has soared from $6.9 billion to $12.8 billion.
The cost increases cannot be blamed on Gonot. But she is responsible for the failure to promptly divulge them to the public and VTA board; the lack of meaningful independent analysis of the rapidly rising price tag; and the refusal to discuss contingency plans if the authority doesn’t receive funding it’s seeking from the federal government for half the project cost.
The authority remains singularly focused on the federal funding, with little regard for local taxpayers who must cover most of the other half of the cost — nor for the wisdom of speeding ahead with a project based on outdated ridership and revenue projections.
This project has been driven by politics rather than sound policy and financial planning. With a constantly changing collection of 18 board members and alternates — who are not directly elected by voters — VTA staff, led by the general manager, have disproportionate influence. It’s why sound professional analysis and complete transparency are so critical.
That has been missing — especially under Gonot.
‘Breach in transparency’
The first big cost hike during Gonot’s tenure, to $9.1 billion, came in a report from the Federal Transportation Administration made final the same month she took the helm at VTA. Rather than acknowledge that increase, VTA officials tried to hide it.
When the local transit authority announced in October 2021 that the federal government would fund a quarter of the project, it didn’t mention the new cost estimate, nor that the completion date had been pushed back four more years, to 2034.
It was the federal agency that revealed the new cost forecast. And it wasn’t until our reporters four months later obtained the full federal report — through a public records act request that the transit authority initially resisted — that the new completion date was learned.
The full extent of the secrecy became clear this year, when the transit authority’s auditor general, Scott Johnson, issued a scathing report documenting staff coverup. Even the authority board was kept in the dark. No detailed budget and cost estimates, schedules or risk updates were provided to the board for 1½ years, between April 2021 and October 2022.
Johnson said his team “documented what some consider to be ‘a breach in transparency’ to the Board and the public, and in some instances communications that were misleading and/or dismissive of concerns that were raised related to the project.”
Tunnel-cost mystery
That dismissiveness continued. As costs soared and the timeline stretched, critics’ concerns about the authority’s plan for tunneling under downtown San Jose gained more attention.
For the approximately five miles of tunneling, the transit agency migrated in 2018 from the original traditional twin-bore design to a single bore with platforms stacked one above the other, and then in 2022 to a single bore with two tracks on the same level.
The transition has increased the tunnel diameter from 20 feet each in the twin-bore design to 53 feet for the most-recent single-bore option. The platforms, originally planned for 50 feet underground, are now to be 80 feet below the street. And the platform width was reduced from 28 feet to 22.
Meanwhile, the price tag has nearly tripled from the $4.7 billion estimate in 2018. How much of that is due to the tunneling change remains a mystery.
In May 2022, VTA board members demanded an independent analysis of tunnel options. What they got six months later was a rudimentary overview that lacked detailed analysis of, most significantly, the cost implications. A promised follow-up report was never completed and presented to the board.
Attack the messenger
VTA officials should learn sometime this year whether they will get all the federal funding they are seeking. But what if they don’t?
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a VTA board member, in April and May asked whether staff was preparing a backup plan in case the full federal funding doesn’t come through.
Gonot told Mahan at a May 9 meeting that her staff was working on it. But less than two weeks later, in an interview with Bay Area News Group reporter Grace Hase, Gonot said contingency planning wasn’t on the radar, that their “first priority” was the federal funding. A backup plan “isn’t a focus of ours right now,” she said.
Then Gonot decided to attack the messenger. After Hase’s article appeared, VTA lambasted it in a blog post as “another uninformed assertion (about) VTA’s Silicon Valley BART Extension project.” Gonot says she knew about the development of the blog post but she has yet to identify an inaccuracy in Hase’s reporting.
The VTA blog post objected the the central point of the article, that the transit agency didn’t have a backup plan in case it didn’t receive sufficient federal funding. In an email Thursday, Gonot’s media relations team said, on the one hand, that contingency planning is ongoing and, on the other hand, that a plan would be prepared for the board and the public “if, and only if, we do not obtain (federal) funding for the full project extension.” Either way, it seems that, indeed, right now VTA has no backup plan — that it’s Plan B is to come up with a Plan B.
The gaslighting of the public, the press and the board over plans for the BART extension is unacceptable. Gonot continues to refuse to be transparent and provide critical independent analysis about the project. She should be replaced.
Originally published at Mercury News & East Bay Times editorial