The value of that land is its adjacency to public transportation

Source?

In SV, land value is generally orthogonal to nearness to public transportation (because of demographics if nothing else). And along transit lines, the only uptick is near to stations. (If you live next to rail between stations, it's a disadvantage because of noise and added travel in accessing neighborhoods on the other side of the tracks, since you are limited to established crossings.

Okay, that wasn't stated... and that's unheard-of among US transit systems AFAIK.

I remember reading that they were able to cover all the costs because of accounting categorizations that they could consider only because they had the real estate. But I don't really know - that's just what some article was saying.