By Guy Span

We all know that BART and SamTrans have had a little tiff over the high cost of the airport extension. SamTrans agreed to pay the extra costs because it was never in BART, that is, on a tax contributing basis. And at the time it seemed a fair treatment. But SamTrans accepted BART’s ridership numbers and has suddenly bellied up to the bar for an estimated $24 million in costs, which at the time were thought to be around $7 million. In these cash-strapped days, that’s a lot of money; in fact, that’s blow-out-the-budget kind of money.

So it’s not surprising that SamTrans would protest the bill and that BART would threaten to sue to collect. According to Mike Healy, spokesman for BART, negotiations are proceeding well and they are “making progress.” In fact, BART is “optimistic” and “encouraged” by the results so far. He blamed the lower ridership and 50% farebox recovery ratio (of the extension) on the downturn in the economy.

However, Staff analyzed the detail in the BART bill to SamTrans and found two questionable items. The largest is from item 6, Fully Allocated Overhead Costs (FOC) based on an annual charge of $102,622,848.56. (Editorially, Bay Crossings must note that if BART needs to close a budget gap of $41 million, this might be a place to look, rather than laying off 16 car and station cleaners.) Then SamTrans is billed for 11.41% of this gigantic number, over which they have no control.

Questioning Mike Healy, Bay Crossings asked why 11%, when the extension represented 6.85% of BART’s miles. We were told that the calculation was based upon other factors, including the percentage of electricity, car miles, variable operations costs, maintenance costs, passenger revenue, and others. So Staff calculated the percentage of each cost in the bill and failed to find one that exceeded 8.6% of BART’s annual expenses (admittedly Staff had to calculate and extrapolate some from the billing costs).

For example, car miles were an unbelievable 8.6% of the total (on an 8.7 mile extension where many trains stop short at Daily City), train operations appeared (it was calculated) at 7.5% (and it carried a 1.24 supervisory charge as if this extension would occupy 24% of BART’s supervision), maintenance and fixed station power came in at 2.1% and 2.3%, respectively, and Fixed Maintenance was 8.6%. Staff was hard pressed to find anything that came near 11%, but they kept looking. BART’s bill was 12.53% of the 2003 operating costs but that doesn’t count. The extension generated 13.46% of total BART revenue (annualizing the 4th quarter) and finally, the five new stations represented 11.63% of all BART stations. While these are the only numbers to cross the 11% threshold, Staff is not convinced that is a good reason to bill SamTrans for 11.41% of BART’s general overhead. Billing this at the more reasonable 8.6% (car miles and fixed maintenance) would save SamTrans nearly $5 million a year.