Adrian Brandt

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@Colin_d_m @RM_Transit Fully 1/3 of VTA’s 6-mi. Silicon Valley Phase II BART extension is Caltrain redundant as the last 2 miles literally parallel Caltrain from SJ Diridon to Santa Clara.

A 3-track yard to park trains overnight at Diridon would the “need” for a Santa Clara yard to avoid deadheading.

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@debora_allen1 @grok How do the executive staff & operating staff payrolls compare to the projected annual budget deficit of up to $380m in the first year after BART exhausts the now-discontinued federal pandemic relief funds that had been making up for the huge over 60% WFH ridership & revenue loss?

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@jeffreylowes @SecDuffy @POTUS Just as with carpet-laying in new building construction, or paving in new highway construction: track-laying is among the last and easiest steps in new rail line construction … it always comes after all the most difficult & costly work is complete. Dummy! 🤦🏻

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@marcjoffe BA VMT and person-hours lost to congestion — not BA population — are better gauges of need.

BA population completely misses all the “drive until you qualify” growth in distant exurb “super commuters” that jam our BA highways & byways with their disproportionately-high daily VMT.

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@marcjoffe @xortija BART will have use of 48 new BART FotF cars VTA paid $173m for but cannot use until its unfunded BSVII extension to San José/Santa Clara actually opens in the mid 2030s, at the earliest. https://t.co/La4VRCKEuY

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@marcjoffe Ha! That old armchair transit critic’s chestnut almost never pencils out. You still need to acquire, operate & maintain the larger buses and an additional small vehicle fleet rarely makes sense because the operator cost is by far the lion’s share of transit vehicle miles.

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

Palmdale vice-mayor wants incoming Metrolink train service cut & replaced by bus transfers to keep LA’s homeless out:

“I don‘t want Palmdale to be the last stop,” he said. “I’m doing this on purpose … Our intent is not to have to take all the homeless.” https://t.co/rlm0pjCusD

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@elbasti @TaupeAvenger @typesfast https://t.co/NMeFzpSuKb

https://t.co/jR51DN5ZFM

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

H2 ferry proves disastrous economically & environmentally, again showing charging batteries is far cheaper, simpler & more efficient than making H2 from electricity, and transporting, fueling, & converting it back to electricity with on-vessel fuel cells.

https://t.co/7CE3lXQ61I

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

In the context of the post-pandemic funding crisis facing US transit agencies, an excellent and insightful @humantransit piece on the role and funding of public transit in America: https://t.co/qgmAMLPM6J

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@marcjoffe @BobAllen2020 Still not profitable Waymo has been funded at over $11b since 2020. Parent company Alphabet (aka Google) with annual revenue of $350b and a $3 trillion market cap promised $5b more in 2024.

Now compare to available transit agency financial backing & resources & engineering. 🤦😭

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@koko38416488 @JRUrbaneNetwork Nearly all suicides and gate drive-arounds. Remember that for those with a will to live, it’s actually not so easy to accidentally & innocently get oneself hit and/or killed by a train without first carelessly & deliberately breaking one or more laws governing crossings & tracks.

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@marcjoffe @BobAllen2020 … BART is the only BA agency of many that could go driverless: a many-years-long multi-billion-dollar politically fraught unfunded capital project that wouldn’t even come close to closing its budget deficits.

“Flexing” available local capital project $$ is an unserious non-fix.

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@marcjoffe @BobAllen2020 BART has the same route miles & half the stations. WMATA’s $5.6b in today’s $ to go driverless is ~64% signal/train mods, ~36% station mods (PSDs, etc) for annual O&M savings of up to 10%.

At those costs, driverless BART would cost ~$4.6b (“HUGE”).

https://t.co/lul0FrBVih

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@marcjoffe @BobAllen2020 But going driverless would be a HUGE capital & political expense even for BART with its sealed guideway and partial automation. It’s unprecedented for street-running transit buses, LRVs, or trains with public crossings & open ROWs.

Not an easy, quick, cheap, or realistic fix.

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@marcjoffe @BobAllen2020 Rough order of magnitude for now. You know, the one that was the basis for your comment glibly suggesting that agencies just flexing local capital project funds was a meaningful and sustainable alternative to a new stable SB63-like funding source for the next decade or so.

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@marcjoffe @BobAllen2020 What fraction of the various agency O&M annual budget deficits do the respective local funds actually available for “flexing” represent? And what fraction of those funds are available on a dependable annual basis the way a SB63 regional sales tax measure would be?

Show your work

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@BobAllen2020 @marcjoffe Exactly. Capital project grants generally may only be used for the specific capital project they were awarded for.

[Adrian Brandt @adrianbrandt]

@marcjoffe I got thrown off a BART FB group by what I think were outraged & incensed BART workers for steadfastly suggesting it’s an great candidate for going driverless since it already normally drives itself while operators watch. Get out of the cabs and instead helpfully walk the trains!