San Bruno B.A.R.T.

  Alameda County residents have been paying sales taxes since 1986 for a variety of transportation projects, but two are dead and 10 more from a renewed voter initiative in 2000 are in jeopardy.

  The list includes some of Alameda County's favorites: BART to Warm Springs, a monorail connection to Oakland airport, Sunol Grade carpool lanes, a Union City transit hub and an I-580 interchange to divert Highway 84 traffic around Livermore.

  At a minimum, the 10 projects have been delayed 2 to 4 years because state transportation money dried up with the recession. Worst case, some may never get built, say regional transportation planners, even a week after the passage of a federal bill that will steer roughly $1 billion a year to the Bay Area.

  That's because the agency spending half-cent sales tax Measure B money has $937 million in hand for the projects, but it's less than half the amount needed to finish them. Many depend on an infusion of state transportation cash or for Sacramento to come through on past promises of gas tax money.

  Neither is a sure bet, and, says Metropolitan Transportation Commission spokesman Randy Rentschler, without the first increase in the state gas tax since the early 1990s those projects could languish indefinitely.

  "We can position projects. We just can't build them. There isn't enough money," he said. "We're not going to fund nine-digit shortfalls on multiple projects within acounty, because we have nine counties and the same problem everywhere."

  "He's right," said Art Dao, deputy director of the Alameda County Transportation Authority, which spends the Measure B money and came up with the list of 10 projects in jeopardy. "If the STIP (the State Transportation Improvement Program) doesn't come back we won't be able to do these."

  But Dao and other county transportation planners are more optimistic than MTC, largely because they've muddled through the money drought to finish locally funded projects. And they are big ones.

  Next spring, work will begin to widen the short 238 connector that links Interstate 580 and the Nimitz Freeway in Hayward and, more often than not, serves as parking lot for streams of trucks headed from the Port of Oakland to the San Joaquin Valley. Similarly, the I-880/Mission Boulevard interchange in Fremont got going last year because of a fund swap.

  "A lot of the financial problems have stimulated some creative thinking," said Dennis Fay, executive director of the Alameda County Congestion Management Agency, which swapped money to get the Measure B jobs going.

  He and Dao agree that delays, not death, are a more likely outcome for the 10 teetering Measure B projects. But long enough delays can mean death.

  The Hayward bypass has been on the books since the 1960s but over the years popular support evaporated. ACTA is amending its voter-approved spending plan for the first time, to instead deliver optional improvements to Mission Boulevard through Hayward.

  Similarly, plans for Highway 84 though Fremont have taken a U-turn, and the Measure B agency is seeking another amendment there, because Fremont leaders no longer want a new highway through town. Taking the two projects together, ACTA is rethinking how it spends $210 million from the 1986 Measure B plan.

  "The nature of these big projects is public sentiment changes, travel patterns change and the situations change," Fay said.

  Noted Dao: "If we do them fast enough, people don't have time to change their minds."

  Still, there is cause for optimism for the people who've paid into Measure B for years. Next summer, AC Transit will roll out a new rapid bus service up and down Telegraph Avenue and International Boulevard, modeled after its successful San Pablo Rapid line.

  And work will begin next year on the I-880/Highway 92 interchange, one of the East Bay's worst bottlenecks, Dao said.

  "There are still projects deliverable with local funds," he said. But he, Fay and Rentschler all agree that the region could have fared better in the federal bill.

  All told, ACTA's struggling projects got $19.6 million in congressional earmarks, even though half of them are also the Alameda County CMA's top five priorities and have long been part of MTC's regional priority plans. That's only $4 million more than the island of Guam will get.

  "The real opportunity to get money outside the system (of formula funds) is gone for four years," Rentschler said.

E-mail Sean Holstege at sholstege@angnewspapers.com