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OAKLAND -- With more than half the returns counted, BART's $1.05 billion seismic retrofit bond measure was lagging late last night in San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties. Updated Nov. 6, 1:30 am
The bond, which requires a two-thirds vote in all three counties, would be used to reinforce BART's aerial structures, stations, and the transbay tube against potentially devastating earthquakes.
"Actually I don't think the people realized the necessity for it," said BART director Roy Nakadegawa. He has worked as a civil engineer in the Bay Area for the last 40 years. "I think it's a vital thing. We should have started much earlier though," he said. "I just don't think we can wait it out for an earthquake to happen."
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| Commuters wait on platform at Mac Arthur station. Photo: Libby Lewis. |
With more than a collective two-thirds of precincts reporting, the measure was losing by a narrow margin of two percent. In Contra Costa County, where the BART system doesn't reach as many people, the measure was struggling to pass among voters. Only 54 percent voted for approval. The bond passed in San Francisco County with 73 percent of the vote. But with votes below two-thirds in the other counties, it appears the bond may not pass.
"When we polled people just before the election, they said if anything would defeat the measure it would be the economy," said Sam Singer, head of Yes on BB, the independent campaign supported by BART. "The voters were watching their money this year."
"If it doesn't pass, I still have a responsibility, knowing what I know, to try to find the resources to make the improvements," BART board President Joel Keller said last week
A September poll taken by a firm hired by BART officials showed that 68 percent of tri-county residents would pass the measure if it appeared on the November ballot.
Howard Ingram, 57, said this morning that the measure seemed a good idea. " I voted for it, because earthquakes can tear up s--t," said Ingram, an Oakland handyman, who voted at the Rockridge branch of the Oakland Public Library. "If the next one's bigger, I don't want BART to fall down."
Ingram said he used BART whenever he needed to cross the bay to San Francisco.
Many people unfamiliar with the bond issue said they were still deciding how to vote Tuesday morning.
"To tell you the truth, I'd never heard of the bond before I came in to vote," said Steve Sherman, 46, an Oakland businessman, after he voted at the Rockridge library. "But I generally think we should spend more money on transportation, even though I drive my car plenty."
Some who had voted against the measure said they were skeptical about giving BART more money to spend.
"I voted no, because you give BART money and it disappears," said Robert Peters, 73, of Oakland. "You can't trust those creeps."
Roy Futscher, 78, a retired director of counseling services at a Berkeley hospital, also voted against the bond measure.
"I responded to the criticism that BART didn't need to put the cost of the bond on all the voters," he said. "There are other sources, like the commuters who ride the system. Also, I had questions about how BART has handled finances in the past."
If approved, the bond would be repaid over the next 40 years through a new property tax, costing taxpayers $7.80 annually per $100,000 of assessed property value.
"It only makes sense to pay for it now," said an Oakland engineer who declined to give his name. "Sooner or later you have to pay. Even if they mishandle the money and it's going to bureaucrats, I'm going to try to pay for public transportation."
The seismic retrofit program was initiated after BART conducted an 18-month earthquake-vulnerability study, with a panel of advisors that included the California Seismic Safety Commission, the California Department of Transportation, and world-renowned seismologists, geotechnical engineers, and earthquake retrofit designers.
The study concluded that a 7.0 earthquake could topple columns supporting elevated tracks, and in a worst-case scenario cause the transbay tube to either collapse or shift enough to put the system out of commission for more than a year.
"Under some conditions, we could have major life safety issues," said Keller.
The retrofit is necessary because BART was designed more than 40 years ago, Nakadegawa said.
"That's a long time ago," he said. "We know a lot about earthquakes we didn't know about then."
Studies on the 1995 Kobe, Japan and 1999 Izmit, Turkey earthquakes produced revelations about how structures hold up or fall apart under the stress of violent earth movement, for example. Those revelations helped persuade BART directors that there's a significant threat to the integrity of the system and the safety of riders.
The bond has been endorsed by the vast majority of Bay Area city councils, as well as the editorial boards of many newspapers, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, The Oakland Tribune, The Daily Californian, and The Bay Guardian. The League of Women Voters, the East Bay League of Conservation Voters, and the Sierra Club are also supporting the measure.
Opposition to the measure has come mostly from taxpayers groups who say they are bond-weary.
"While we feel that the intent of Measure BB is worthwhile, we question the means by which the measure will fund the seismic retrofit," John Wolfe, a Concord resident and executive vice president of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association, said last week.
CCTA members include 150 Bay Area businesses and 350 residents. The association, like the Alliance of Contra Costa Taxpayers -- the group that filed the official ballot opposition with the election office in Oakland -- argued that BART officials have been sloppy with their cost estimates.
"We weren't so happy with their cost-benefit calculations," Wolfe said.
According to newspaper reports this summer, BART board members had initially estimated seismic repair costs at $1.7 billion. BART officials then lowered the number to $1.5 billion, Wolfe said, before settling on the $1.05 billion estimate.
"That's a lot of fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants kind of figuring," he said.
Ken Hambrick, head of the recently formed ACCT, said in an interview last week that the major issue behind the measure is the way BART is trying to fund the system upgrade. A small raise in fare prices, Hambrick suggests, would be enough to pay for the retrofit.
"If you look at BART's history of money management," Hambrick said, "it's not a very good history."
As a result of BART's $28 million budget deficit, an approved 5 percent fare hike will take affect at the beginning of 2003. BART officials are concerned that another fare increase might force people to return to their cars.
BART board president Keller said it would be unfair to make riders bear the burden of a price increase, because the transportation system helps decrease freeway congestion and reduce negative impacts on the environment.
"There is a benefit to BART for everyone in the three counties," Keller said.
"If it doesn't pass, next year we'll try to put it back on the ballot," said Nakadegawa. He said in the future he would approach the issue of funding from a slightly different angle. "I will try to use this approach of putting it partly on the fares. But we still need some money to come from bonds."