Bay City News
The latest phase of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority's BART Silicon Valley extension project broke ground Saturday with work to build an elevated light rail in San Jose.
Phase II of VTA's BART Silicon Valley extension project will begin with work to build an elevated light rail along Capitol Expressway, connecting the existing Alum Rock light-rail station to the Eastridge Transit Center in San Jose. The BART line is planned to eventually end with a station in the city of Santa Clara.
Phase I, completed in 2020, added BART service from the Warm Springs station in Fremont through Milpitas and ending at Berryessa Station in North San Jose. It included two new stations, each part of two larger transit centers at the Milpitas Transit Center and Berryessa Transit Center.
Plans for Phase II were discussed during a joint VTA/BART working meeting Friday.
"We are as close as we have ever been to the dream that I think Santa Clara County voters have held out for close to three decades of bringing BART into downtown San Jose," said Tom Maguire, VTA's chief megaprojects delivery officer for the BART Silicon Valley project.
The $12.7 billion project is still seeking about $6 billion from the Federal Transit Administration to cover half of its estimated expenses. The VTA expects to hear by early July about the percentage the federal government is willing to pay, Maguire said.
In the past several months, the estimated price tag has gone up from $12.2 billion to $12.75 billion, according to the VTA. Maguire explained that this increase came after project managers and oversight consultants advised that the expanding costs of construction in California over the next 12-year construction period must be considered.
The project received a "vote of confidence" from the FTA, which allocated $500 million toward it for the federal 2024 fiscal year budget, said Carolyn Gonot, general manager and CEO of VTA.
"There's a two-thirds chance that the cost estimate will be at or below the $12.7 million and a one-third chance that it will be at or above," said Maguire.
Planners are moving forward with a single-bore tunnel design for the 5-mile underground portion. The other mile of track will be built above ground.
However, concerns have been raised from the public about the cost and environmental impact of a single-bore design versus the more commonly used twin-bore design. Critics believe that the ever-increasing cost is partly due to the selection of a single-bore tunnel, according to the Bay Area Transportation Working Group, a volunteer group of transportation advocates and professionals who keep up with and try to improve public transit in the Bay Area.
The group sent out a press release this week describing what they think are "major flaws in VTA's overpriced BART subway."
They focus on the single-bore tunnel, a design that they say has never been used for any subway in the U.S., as a more costly, risky and environmentally damaging alternative to twin bores.
The substantially larger and deeper single-bore design will require much more soil to be excavated and removed, the group said.
"We are confident that a fair assessment by independent experts will conclude that the twin-bore option would be both substantially less costly and safer and more accessible to future BART riders than the single bore," their press release said.
VTA Board of Directors chair Cindy Chavez said they're asking staff to conduct a thorough and up-to-date analysis comparing the two options.
"The idea of doing a twin-bore would be stepping quite a few steps back in the process, really all the way back to 2018 when we decided to go forward with the single-bore," Maguire said.
Some of the concerns from the public during Friday's joint VTA/BART working committee meeting were about ventilation and accessibility throughout the railway system in case of emergency and the ability to quickly evacuate.
"We need to respond to the public because these are not unserious people," said Sudhanshu "Suds" Jain, a Santa Clara city council member and an alternate member on the VTA board. "There's probably enough that we can provide to satisfy these people... I don't want it to be 'just trust us,' that's not an acceptable answer."
Several members on the board reiterated the public's request to optimize transparency at Friday's meeting.
"The very best way to make sure there is clarity to the public is to prioritize these meetings," Chavez said. "If these meetings can't be scheduled because of our board then we should be thinking about who should be on the committee because they either have time or they don't."
The project is expected to be completed in 2037. The next joint VTA/BART working committee meeting will take place in August, the board of directors said.
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