Los Gatos has a transit network drawn for a different town. Some stops see almost no riders because they do not connect anywhere people are going. Meanwhile roughly 13,000 residents live in districts with no fixed-route service, including the mountain communities cut off when Route 76 was discontinued in 2010.
We ran the federally prescribed cost-benefit analysis. Even the current network, flawed as it is, already returns $1.71 in benefits for every $1 spent over 20 years. A redesigned network is projected to do meaningfully better.
Public transit gets cut whenever ridership numbers drop, and ridership drops whenever the buses do not go where people need to go. It is a feedback loop that ends with the empty stops you can already see around town.
The federal government has already done the hard work of figuring out how to value transit honestly. Travel-time savings, crash reduction, fewer emissions, health benefits from walking to stops, the option value to people who do not ride today but might tomorrow, all of it has a defined methodology under FTA cost-benefit guidelines and USDOT BCA Guidance 2024.
So we ran the numbers, for the existing network, for restoring Route 76, and for a redesigned Route 27 with stops where the demand actually is.
This is a public-interest analysis, not a paid advocacy document. Every number links back to its federal source. The pipeline that produces every chart and table is open source, and corrections are applied in public.
The analysis intentionally uses a conservative scope: property value uplift near stops, wider agglomeration effects, and school-access value are excluded from the baseline scenario. The $1.71 BCR holds even without those items.
Three pieces of work, each with the data and methodology open for inspection.
16 districts, 8 federally recognized benefit categories, 20-year present value at OMB-prescribed discount rates, peer-benchmarked against VTA and California operators. This is where the $1.71-per-$1 figure comes from.
Open the full analysis
In progressA reworked Route 27 with 13 candidate new stops in underserved neighborhoods, plus the case for restoring Route 76 to Summit Road. The interactive corridor map and ridership model are being finalized.
See what is coming
ReferenceEvery acronym and agency cited in this project, defined in plain language with links to primary sources. Hover any underlined term in the analysis pages for an instant definition.
Browse the glossary
16 districts mapped and costed. 8 benefit categories quantified. BCR and NPV computed at all three OMB discount rates.
Clarke-Wright routing, Mohring headways, FTA 9040.1G stop spacing. Route 27 corridor with 13 new stop candidates.
Finalizing the public-facing route-redesign dashboard. Stop-by-stop placards with walkshed maps and benefit-cost ratios.
| Source | What it provides | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Census ACS 2018-2022 | Block-group demographics, income, commute mode, vehicle ownership | Equity analysis, demand model, district profiles |
| VTA GTFS feed | Stop locations, route geometry, schedules, headways | Coverage gaps, walkshed analysis, route optimization |
| USDOT BCA Guidance 2024 | Value of time ($17.80 personal, $31.90 business), reliability weighting | Categories 1 and 6 (time savings, reliability) |
| EPA SC-GHG 2022 update | Social cost of carbon at $120 per metric ton CO2 (3% rate) | Category 4 (emission reduction) |
| SWITRS / FHWA KABCO | Santa Clara County crash rates, severity-weighted costs | Category 3 (crash reduction) |
| WHO HEAT v5.2 | 12 walk-minutes per trip, $0.16 per walking minute | Category 5 (health benefits) |
| TCRP Report 95 | 20% induced demand rate, consumer surplus methodology | Category 8 (induced demand) |
| NTD peer benchmarks | California transit agency operating costs per revenue hour | VTA cost reasonableness check |
The full cost-benefit dashboard has every number, every chart, and every source. The glossary at the bottom defines every term used.