☆ Op/Ed: Hiking the sales tax on Santa Clara County residents will not clean up the air
It’s as if local media imagines clouds of smog will miraculously disperse if only voters approve the RTM sales tax hike this November. But Los Altos Institution Research Fellow, Opp Now contributing editor, and High School Senior Athan Joshi argues there will be no health benefit. An Opp Now exclusive Op/Ed.
Nobody in Santa Clara County needs convincing that congestion is bad for our lungs. The question on the November ballot (enabled by SB 63) isn't whether clean air matters. It’s whether handing VTA another half-percent of sales tax will buy any.
Of the 9.75% sales tax collected across the county, 1.625% is already dedicated to transit. The Regional Transit Measure would make it 2.125%. San Jose and Milpitas consumers would face 10.50% tax and Campbell would reach 11.00%, making one wonder why Campbell’s former Mayor is one of the most vigorous proponents of the new levy.
SB 63 requires a two-phase financial efficiency review of BART, Muni, Caltrain and AC Transit. It imposes maintenance-of-effort rules on those four plus Golden Gate Transit, SamTrans, the ferry system and the East Bay bus agencies. VTA is, however, exempt from the cost scrutiny applied to other agencies, and its share can be spent on operations, capital or repaving roads (as long as those roads carry buses). The independent oversight committee the measure creates confirms that money followed the expenditure plan. It does not ask whether the money produced outcomes.
The county has seen where unconditional money goes. BART Phase I opened in 2020 and the Milpitas and Berryessa stations are running at 14% of their launch ridership forecast. Phase II went from a $4.7 billion estimate in 2014 to $12.7 billion, with passenger service now projected for 2037. In June, the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury concluded there is "no realistic plan to deal with foreseeable financial risks" and recommended VTA publish a strategy that reduces its dependence on new tax measures. Roughly $375 million of Phase II's funding plan assumes this November measure passes.
VTA's recent record is one of spending more to move fewer people. From 2019 to 2024, boardings fell 24%, from 36.4 million to 27.7 million, with a marginal increase in 2026, helped partly by the soccer World Cup. Cost per boarding went from $11.49 to $17.53. Farebox recovery slid from 9.1% to 6.2%. Labor cost is over 70% of VTA’s operating expense. A sales tax pitched as a service improvement is, in practice, mostly a wage-and-benefit backfill.
The environmental claim is the weakest part of the case. "Every full bus removes dozens of cars" is a fine argument for a full bus. It is not an argument for this system in its current form. The argument that buses beat cars on tire and brake particulates is true only at load factors VTA no longer achieves.
Under the standard EMEP/EEA emission inventory factors, a heavy-duty vehicle emits roughly four times the non-exhaust fine particulate of a car per vehicle-mile. Divide by occupancy and the break-even sits around six passengers on board at all times. VTA's own filings put average bus occupancy at 6.7 passengers in 2024, down from 8.6 in 2019, and that figure excludes deadhead miles, which make the real number worse.
Nor is the region's air crisis on the trajectory implied. The American Lung Association report cited in support of the measure recorded the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland region's lowest-ever particle pollution levels for the second consecutive year. Transit is not worth funding on a climate premise this thin.
Even those inclined to support more VTA funding should demand a better conceived measure: one in which VTA is subject to the same efficiency review as BART and Muni, a published cash-flow model and Plan B for Phase II, service-level and cost-per-boarding targets written into the expenditure plan, and a sunset if they are missed. None of that is in the measure before us.
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