“In my over three decades in the governmental surface transportation industry, with direct experience with well over 100 transit operators, MPO’s, state DOT’s, and other organizations, and knowledge of virtually every significant transit agency in the U.S., I have never encountered any transit agency that has consistently taken so much money from the taxpayers and produced so little in the way of transit ridership.

“When compared to its peers – the largest transit agencies in the U.S., selected from the FTA’s “Top 50” report – both VTA’s bus and light rail operations were clearly the worst. In fact, in what are the most important metrics for the VTA’s most important transit mode, bus subsidy per passenger and per passenger-mile – VTA’s performance was so poor that it was, quite literally, “off the scale.”

“VTA’s reaction to the down-turn in its sales tax revenues following the “Dot-Com” bust was to significantly increase fares and to cut back on service, while continuing to do all it could do to further the construction of its rail projects, producing a 30% decline in transit ridership from 2001 to 2006, the largest I have ever seen for a major transit agency in the absence of events such as hurricanes and long-term labor actions.”—Thomas A. Rubin, Transit and Government Finance Expert, CPA, CMA, CMC, CIA, CGFM, CFM

Read more in Mr. Rubin’s declaration to the court (140 kb Word document)

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