With the addition of a fourth weekday commuter train from Gilroy to San Francisco and now the return of weekday bus service from Gilroy to the Salinas Intermodal Transit Center, transit options from the Gilroy Transit Center are picking up! The added Caltrain service began on Sept. 25, and Bus line 59 from the Monterey-Salinas Transit agency began its launch on Oct. 30. If you haven’t looked recently at transit schedules from Gilroy, take a look now and consider giving a bus or a train a go.
Admittedly, these changes are small and long overdue, but as housing continues to grow away from job centers and in more affordable communities like Gilroy, attention to public transit options is critical to avoid adding to traffic gridlock and to environmental damage. Expect more from our transit agencies as we continue to inch forward, and keep checking transit options that might work for you.
Mayor Marie Blankley, CPA
Dear Friends,
The late Norman Y. Mineta said, in 1996 at the Institute which now bears his name at SJSU, the crucial question in transportation today is, “What should government do, and what should it leave to others?” Growing the public sector transit boondoggles takes us in the wrong direction, and give the wrong answer to Norm’s “crucial question.” Today, almost 99% of bus seats are transported empty, while motorists are being gouged to pay higher and higher gas taxes, so that our elected officials can divert gas tax dollars to bankrupt-from-conception public sector transit. How much more transport could we have if we privatized transit? Fraud, waste and abuse at the transit agencies is a disgrace, and has become so bad that it would make Stalin proud to see the “success” of the boondoggles. Small and very small business owners cannot afford more government waste, and are fleeing in droves to less socialist States. If public transit was sound transport policy, then why does the Legislature enact more laws so that more taxes can be taken from us to keep the boondoggles running? The transit agencies’ directors are not elected to their positions on the transit agencies, so they govern without the consent of the voters. If you tax people out of their cars, how will you pay for transit boondoggles. Where are local leaders with the common sense to end the wastefulness at the public sector transit agencies? If it was a horse, we would do the humane thing. Instead, misguided leaders call for more taxes and fees to reward their wastefulness, and they cover-up the full extent of their insolvency by using non-GAAP accounting methods, like Enron did, like Bernie Madoff did, “off-book” accounting, which omits capital and fixed costs, thus hiding their true insolvency from voters. I think that our leaders have us on the Road to Serfdom, the same route taken by the USSR. Public sector transit is unsound, unsustainable, and unfair public policy. Caveat viator. Joe Thompson (408) 848-5506; [email protected], Past-President, 1999-2001, 2006, Gilroy-Morgan Hill Bar Assn., Past Chair, Legislation Committee, Transportation Lawyers Assn.