Caltrain Tax...or Accountability?

We talked about the possibility of a Caltrain tax to try to right the sinking ship's finances last June here.  Now local scribe John Horgan has weighed in on the topic in his Merc column.  He doesn't get into the details of Positive Train Control but you can read about it here.  The new contractor and the deadline of end of 2018 is here.  It was originally supposed to be finished in 2015!  Horgan notes

A year ago, the (Joint Powers) board members, all of them appointees, decided to terminate a huge contract for a new rail safety setup designed to coincide with a federal mandate and a plan to electrify the Caltrain route and, perhaps someday, the addition of high-speed trains on the same tracks.

They sued the contractor, Parsons Transportation Group, to recover $98 million in San Mateo County Superior Court for a range of alleged performance complaints. Parsons, unsurprisingly, countersued, blaming Caltrain for the tangled mess......The resolution of the Parsons legal morass (one way or the other) and the board’s oversight of the Caltrain electrification program (and the massive amounts of cash involved) going forward will have a critical bearing on any tax election in the future.

You can find Caltrain's financial statements here.  A quick read of page 43 yields Operating Revenue of $102 million against Operating Expenses of $132 million.  Throw in another $84 million of depreciation expense and you have and Operating Loss of $114.5 million which is about the same as the prior year--and probably many prior years.  Note 11 also shows that the Feds, the State and local governments put in $155 million more in capital contributions than the prior year.  Aside from John Horgan's point about Board capability and accountability, I have to wonder exactly what sort of tax could stem this bleeding?

Down in the footnotes, we also get some litigation details that would cause more blood loss if Caltrain loses:

The JPB and Parsons Transportation Group (“Parsons”) have each sued each other in the San Mateo Superior Court for breach of contract, among other things, regarding Parsons’ provision of the JPB’s Positive Train Control System. The JPB has also sued Parsons’ surety for failing to comply with its obligations under the contract’s performance bond. The lawsuits have been consolidated and are presently in the discovery/pretrial motion phase of the litigation. The contract underlying these actions is valued at $159 million. Parsons alleges damages of approximately $59 million. The JPB in its action against Parsons alleges damages of $98 million. The JPB is vigorously pursuing/defending its claims but an out-of-court settlement process has also commenced.

Comments

[Bruce Dickinson]

Joe, this caught Bruce Dickinson's eye right after you posted and my accounting team and I were doing some BD Enterprises, LLC tax planning and I had one of my guys (actually was a gal) take a quick look and the numbers above actually understate the losses! That's right, Linda dowloaded the financials pointed out to yours truly that over 3 years, Cal-Train burned through a HALF BILLION DOLLARS in cash, which is for those counting zeroes, is $500,000,000 dollars. That is $167 million dollars per year, with 2017 burning through $207 million dollars in cash alone.

Now, as you pointed out, a significant amount of money is used to upgrade track, maintain and purchase rolling stock, signal systems, etc, but guess what a dollar lost is a dollar lost. This money pit is funded by Federal and State/Local/Agency capital and operating grants and guess what else? DEBT! That's right, even your favorite transportation agency is sucking on the teat of financial crack cocaine (like most Americans, quite frankly). There are fare box bonds as well as bank credit lines that Cal-Train uses to fund its operating losses and capital spending.

While Bruce Dickinson will concede that most public transportation systems will not operate at a profit, the Cal-Train cash burn rate is pretty bad and will only get worse as more expensive capital needs to be maintained and replaced.

Folks, while Burlingame has the "Mighty Eucs" it is not Money Tree City USA and as Joe adeptly states, get ready for both higher explicit and implicit taxes funding transportation boondoggles.....just as you spend more money for your next new autonomous electric car!

[hillsider]

I guess LimeBikes are a better use of public subsidies. Where is the Grand Jury when we need it?

[Cassandra]

LimeBikes gathers credit card info, maps spending habits and gps coordinates and is a giant sponge of where healthy people go locally and what they do. Data goldmine!

Any PR about getting people out of cars or environmental concerns is too precious...