The VTA is pushing for the creation of a special district within Caltrans that would focus solely on Santa Clara County. It would set up shop at VTA headquarters on First Street and state engineers would work side by side with local planners. No longer would the VTA and city engineers need to trek to Oakland to meet with state officials…Officials with the VTA say the 40-mile distance to local headquarters in Oakland is more than just a tough commute up Interstate 880. The distance makes it difficult to set up meetings and build solid working relationships with Caltrans.
Step 1: Sabotage a voter-approved rail plan that had all the funding in place for running modern, European trains between San Jose and Union City BART.
Step 2: Spend the next 2 decades scamming billions of dollars for a white-elephant BART extension that merely replicates conventional tracks already there.
Step 3: Realize “Oh shit!” I880 is a parking lot, and ask Caltrans to relocate 40 miles south.
The best outcome is to force VTA planners to commute I880 — every single fucking day. Let them eat their dogfood for a change.
Systemic Failure 
What is Step 1 referring to?
The 1996 transportation sales tax measure provided funds to run an “eBART” type rail service between Diridon Station and Union City BART. The project got as far as purchasing the rail ROW, and getting RFQ from DMU vendors (RegioSprinter being the most likely choice).
But then they threw it all away, deciding instead to spend billions of dollars changing standard-gauge with BART-gauge rails. The 1996 tax dollars were given to the usual suspects for “preliminary engineering” for BART-SJ.
As far as I can tell the Bart is a sort of S-Bahn for morons. I’m no expert on the bay area, but from what I’ve seen it looks it could have been built using off shelf Siemens train sets, something like the DB 420, running off of overhead power instead of third rail on normal gauge tracks, using old inter urban or other rail ROW outside of the necessary underground sections. Apparently the shitheads who always seem to get their way didn’t think proven technology was sufficiently futuristic for a city that deserved a fake monorail that runs on soviet? gauge tracks. The bay area is apparently as stupid as southern california. It is only fitting that when given the chance to build an S-Bahn like extension between SJ and Union city they went with the option of repeating the same space age mistake they made when they first designed the bart system in the first place.
The preference for stub third rail lines, freeway ROW light rail instead of better located BRT and the lack of a word for S-Bahn in American English are all evidence of an immaturity in the way we think about transit, or rather the way we feel about vehicle type. The third rail clusterfuck that is bart only makes sense in terms of whatever symbolic economy “friends of transit” in the bay area live in.