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Pretty much everyone seems to agree that the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority desperately needs a leadership fix — but where to start?
For one glimpse of the problem, take a look at the results of a recent public survey on the performance of the transit agency’s 12-member board of directors. About 70% of respondents gave the VTA board low marks, particularly for being ineffective and clumsy at communication. Other withering feedback came from a recent civil grand jury report, which primarily blamed poor board leadership for causing VTA to become one of the most inefficient and dysfunctional transit agencies in the U.S.
VTA directors are now facing an immense challenge to prove they are steering the organization back on the right track, especially as voters are expected to decide in November on another transit tax. In the meantime, the transit agency’s directors have taken some of the criticisms to heart, and they are pledging to get better.
On that matter, the VTA directors recently commissioned an independent review to evaluate ways to improve the transit agency’s governance. The independent report, conducted by the consulting firm RSM, indicated that VTA’s complex problems require some complex solutions — the review analyzed nearly 30 separate ideas to facilitate VTA’s governance. This included simple fixes, such as better scheduling practices to ensure fewer missed board meetings, and also some more tricky proposals like reconfiguring the entrenched political system for appointing VTA directors.
Mountain View Councilman John McAlister, who serves on the VTA board and chairs the committee overseeing this report, said he agreed with pretty much everything.
“VTA has a lot of work to get done,” he said. “There’s just this sense that the people who are getting appointed aren’t the best, and if you don’t have good people, then you don’t get good results.”
Previously, it has been nearly impossible to get board members to reflect on their own effectiveness. In 2016, transit agency staff sent out a survey questionnaire to board members, but only two members reportedly took the time to fill it out. A similar self-assessment survey sent out earlier this year reportedly received feedback from about half the members.
One key problem is the lack of engagement on the VTA board, which consists entirely of political appointees serving on city councils or the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. Often, board members face a steep learning curve, and it doesn’t help that they usually lack any experience in transportation, finance or management.
Many appointees also have a hard time separating their responsibility for improving countywide transportation from the local priorities of their political base. In particular, the San Jose City Council, which controls five seats on the VTA board, has been accused of hogging funding to prop up light rail and BART transit.
Many VTA members admit they’re overwhelmed with too many responsibilities, making it impossible for them to read every staff report or attend every meeting. Some board members have extremely poor attendance — in some cases, members have skipped every meeting of committees they sit on. Supervisor Dave Cortese has attended barely more than 1 out of 4 board meetings since joining the VTA board in 2008, according to the agency’s published statistics, which includes time when he served as an alternate board member.
The independent review found there are several relatively easy fixes that VTA could implement. In particular, the board’s 17 active committees could be consolidated, streamlined or eliminated to save time. Standing committees, which oversee responsibilities like capital projects or congestion management, should be given more authority to approve expenditures without bringing everything to the full board, the report recommended. Similarly, board members should face some minimum requirement for attendance, and consultants recommended each member should get an annual “scorecard” that grades their performance for things like participation, leadership and relevant knowledge.
Other needed board improvements would likely take more work. The consultant report pointed out VTA members needed to draft an updated master strategic plan, and use that to guide their future decision-making.
Most difficult of all, the independent report urged the VTA board to consider taking its process for appointing directors back to the drawing board. Prospective board members should be first vetted for their qualifications and commitments to ensure they can fulfill their duties before being nominated for the job, the report said.
The recommendations will be taken up by the full VTA board of directors at a future meeting.
VTA really needs to merge with SamTrans. Serving only half of the peninsula does noone any good. Making Mountain View residents pay two fares to transfer to SamTrans to get to the SFO airport or to San Francisco really discourages public transit use. Right now, VTA focuses too much on San Jose and the rest of Silicon Valley has terrible public transit.
I agree that VTA should be shut down. It is a public entity that collects a lot of money and spends a lot of money. It provides little value to most residents. Most medium to large private firms send their own busses to train stations or other private stops to pick up their employees and deliver them to their jobs. VTA will never be able to compete with private bus services.
Yes, VTA can’t organise transportation that offers an efficient alternative to solo driving. However, private companies can and perhaps we should all be better off getting one of their people to run public transportation for the Bay Region. We need to get efficient transportation working as options for those with regular commutes so that they can work, sleep, surf the web, or whatever, rather than sit on their own in a car clogging up our highways and busy business areas.
VTA is failing miserably because they are looking at this the wrong way. They are thinking that they serve lower income, seniors, etc. rather than providing an option for regular commuters. A well run transportation for the whole of the Bay Area, with cross Bay routes, routes from the Coast, dedicated airport shuttles, and a comprehensive service that complements Caltrain and city shuttles rather than competing against them.
Yes, get an experienced traffic chief and staff, stop duplicating the roles across multi agencies, use technology to improve and completely overhaul the whole rotten transport system.
As we are discussing VTA’s board structured and the shortcomings of Bay Area Transit, be advised that the usual suspects are back asking for money. This “mega-measure” nonsense is quite annoying. Vote NO. Over the last several elections, voters in Santa Clara County have passed multiple tax and fee increases including gas taxes, two bridge toll increases, three VTA sales taxes, Santa Clara County’s Measure A 1/8 cent sales tax, the state prop 30 ¼ cent sales tax and the 2010 Measure B Vehicle Registration Fee of $10. Additionally, we’re on the hook to pay back numerous state bond issues including high speed rail, the Proposition 1 water bond and the infrastructure bonds of 2006.
All this nickel and diming has contributed into making the Bay Area a horribly expensive place to live; especially for people of modest means, who must pay the greatest percentage of their income in these regressive taxes and fees. Each increase by itself does not amount to much, say a quarter cent, but the cumulative effect is to add to the unaffordability of the region.
Before increasing taxes YET AGAIN, waste needs to be removed from transportation projects. For example, we need to eliminate the redundant and wasteful section of the BART extension between the San Jose and Santa Clara Caltrain stations. The BART segment from these stations would duplicate both the existing Caltrain line and VTA’s 22 and 522 buses to a station that has approximately 1000 riders each weekday.
Why don’t the wealthy high rollers in the “Leadership Group” suggest taxing their rich companies and leave the little guy alone for a change? Sede http://www.nomegatax.org/
Mountain View’s Councilman John McAlister has followed in the ‘harsh internal critic’ footsteps of a previous VTA representative, who also was public and vocal about governance problems in VTA. McAlister is trying to be (IMO) part of the solution to this extremely serious governance issue. I publicly laud him and his work on trying to make this particular local government agency work efficiently for us, the residents (not the administrators or employees of the VTA).
One former MV representative to the VTA (Margaret Abe-Koga) was IMO entirely ineffective in this aspect of her ‘public responsability’ to the residents of North County. Councilman Matt Pear was a persistent internal critic of the VTA when he served on their board.
The fact that there are so many communities (Stanford, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino,…) creating their own shuttle systems is evidence that VTA’s service to those communities is inadequate. What that says about VTA’s leadership is left as an exercise for the reader.
Alternatively, just shut it down. The VTA budget for 2020 is $505M and 2019 had a $30M deficit. That money could be better spent as direct payments to those in need of transportation. They could then have a variety of options: taxi, ride-sharing services, vanpool, vehicle sharing, etc.
If you just keep funding the VTA like they always have, then they’re going to just do what they’ve always had: produce a costly and inferior service.
VTA does serve lower-income people and seniors and disabled people (and young people too young to drive), all of whom rely on public transit. It is cavalier to say “shut it down” as I suspect all/most of the naysayers have not ridden a VTA bus in years/decades.
VTA Board of Directors should be directly elected by district:
1. Would insure commitment and interest in the position (vs. having non elected part timers in need of padding their political resume)
2. Better local representation (currently San Jose controls the entire agency)
3. Let voters assess directors’ qualifications and fitness for the position ….and recall them if necessary.
4. Make directors more accountable to the public.
Electing VTA Board members by district? How many districts? The county board of supervisors has 5 large districts. Incumbents seeking re-election are not challenged by any serious candidates. The districts are too large – and press coverage of local politicians too weak – to get good challengers. And without challengers, voters learn little – too little – about incumbents. South county had a county supervisor no one challenged for a decade – even though county employees knew he was a gambling addict and a crook.
@Gary
Not suggesting using the County Supervisor Districts as a model. Could keep current number of directors and divide the county in that many districts. Quite frankly any districting will be better than what we have now: one two-year appointed seat for Mountain View every other 6 or 8 years (since we’re sharing with 3 other cities including Los Altos Hills -which has about zero transit-) AND zero accountability.
You could set term limits as is done for County supervisors.
As far as oversight and press coverage, it’ll always be an issue but our district director will hopefully do more local outreach/town halls and at least voters will have a voice every four years.
So 12 districts? A full-time job like a county supervisor or part-tine like a Mountain View city councilmember? And how would elected members from north county have any more control over expenditures than currently? South county has more voters. Bureaucrats and elected officials will always blame someone else. Maybe roll the VTA back into the county government. The VTA top administrator would work for the county executive who, in turn, answers to the (currently) 5 elected supervisors. Or maybe newspapers and voters will reject tax measures proposed by VTA that provide too much discretion to use or squander the money. That could help.