Press Releases

For Immediate Release

MTC Leaders Announce Plans for New Regional Agreement on Rail and Express Bus Expansion

CONTACT:

Jim Beall
408.299.3924

Sharon Brown
510.869.5098

Steve Heminger
510.817.5810

OAKLAND, Calif., Feb. 7, 2001...Outgoing Chair James T. Beall Jr. of Santa Clara County and incoming Chair Sharon J. Brown of Contra Costa County announced today that the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) will seek to develop a new regional transit expansion agreement for inclusion as part of the update of MTC's Regional Transportation Plan scheduled for adoption in November 2001. The new transit expansion agreement will include both high priority rail and express bus improvements to serve the region's most congested travel corridors.

The new agreement would be a successor to MTC Resolution No. 1876 adopted in 1988, a multiyear rail expansion program that has delivered new BART service to Dublin and Bay Point in the East Bay, the Tasman light-rail extension in Silicon Valley, and the BART extension to the San Francisco International Airport, expected to open in 2002. The innovative Resolution 1876 agreement has leveraged almost $2 billion in state, regional, and local funds to obtain commitments for $930 million in fiercely competitive federal New Starts funds for Bay Area rail projects.

The BART-SFO project is slated to receive annual appropriations of New Starts funding through 2006 to fulfill the federal commitment to the project.

"We've delivered on MTC's 1988 promise of new transit service for Bay Area commuters. It's time to fashion a regional consensus for the next phase of rail and express bus expansion in our congestion-plagued region," said outgoing MTC Chair Jim Beall, who also is the current chairperson of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors.

"The Resolution 1876 agreement has served the region well because it relied on local voters' financial support for the projects as well as a fundamental sense of regional fairness. MTC's new transit expansion agreement will be crafted with these same principles in mind," added Sharon Brown, incoming MTC chair and a San Pablo city councilperson.

MTC's recently completed Bay Area Transportation Blueprint for the 21st Century -- as well as major new state and local funding commitments last year in the Governor's Traffic Congestion Relief Program, Alameda County Measure B, and Santa Clara County Measure A -- has identified numerous proposed rail and bus projects throughout the region. The Blueprint for the 21st Century highlighted the BART extension in the Fremont-San Jose corridor and the Muni Metro Central Subway project in San Francisco as leading candidates for federal New Starts funds in the future. In addition, ongoing studies in the Interstate 580 and State Route 4 corridors are expected to develop more project ideas and information by the end of the year. Thus, MTC can rely on a large and growing body of project proposals and analysis in fashioning its transit expansion agreement.

Beall and Brown also announced that while they were pleased that preliminary conversations have taken place, they had written to the boards of directors of BART and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) to urge them to accelerate direct discussions on the operational, financial and institutional arrangements that would be necessary to extend service outside the current BART district into Santa Clara County, as proposed in the Governor's Program and Santa Clara Measure A. Similar understandings between BART and San Mateo County laid the groundwork for the BART-SFO extension included in the Resolution 1876 agreement.

"We have a considerable amount of work ahead of us in the coming months, and MTC will be looking to our many local transportation partners for advice and assistance in developing this new agreement," concluded Brown. "We also will seek the counsel of our state and federal legislative delegations and the new U.S. Transportation Secretary, the Honorable Norm Mineta -- all of whom were instrumental in securing the funding and united political support for the original Resolution 1876 agreement."

MTC is the regional transportation planning, financing, and coordinating agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.

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Click here for more information on MTC's proposed regional transit expansion agreement.

 

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