The opening of BART’s much-anticipated extension into San Jose could slip to as late as June 2034, tacking on an extra four years to the project’s timeline, according to a new analysis from federal transit officials.
In a scathing 145-page report obtained by this news organization through a Public Records Act request, the Federal Transit Administration and its consultants expressed grave concerns about the complex infrastructure project and the Valley Transit Authority’s ability to deliver it on budget and on schedule.
The report not only offers a new timeline for the project but provides insight into why federal officials indicated late last year that the project could rise to $9.1 billion — $4.4 billion over the VTA’s initial cost estimate and $2.2 billion over the agency’s most recent projection.
The agency found that the VTA’s cost and schedule projections are “overly optimistic” and that the methods used by VTA to derive the project’s staffing needs and risks were “insufficient” and even “illogical” at times, creating a “misleading risk profile” for the project, the report states.
The FTA’s review of the BART project is part of a first-in-the-nation pilot program meant to streamline federal funding to new transit projects. Following the review, the agency in October 2021 announced that it would funnel $2.3 billion of federal money into the extension, or a quarter of the final project cost, whichever is less.
When asked about the FTA’s latest analysis, officials from the VTA said they would not update their anticipated cost and schedule for the project, which currently sits at $6.9 billion with a 2030 completion date, until they award four major contracts, including one for tunneling and trackwork slated to be finalized this summer.
Nevertheless, VTA’s BART Program Chief Takis Salpeas acknowledged this week in an interview the possibility of a delayed opening, which he said is not accounted for in estimates typically publicized by VTA.
“Sometime before 2032,” Salpeas said. “Maybe I have to go out another year or so.”
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The mega transportation project is meant to bring BART into the core of the Bay Area’s largest city and complete a ring of rapid rail service around the region. Since 2000, Santa Clara residents have approved three sales tax increases to fund the project. The VTA currently only has funding in place to cover $6.9 billion.
Much of the FTA’s concern centered around a contentious tunnel construction method called “single bore” that the VTA plans to use in order to dig one of the world’s largest underground subway tunnels — 48 feet wide, the width of a basketball court, through a 4.7-mile stretch of San Jose.
According to VTA’s projection, the agency expected tunnel boring to take 25 months, moving at a rate of 44 feet per day. But the FTA’s analysis said that rate was more than twice as fast as similar large-diameter highway tunnel projects in Miami and Seattle were completed.
The FTA recommended that the Bay Area transit agency add 14 months to the tunnel timeline after declaring VTA’s mining rate was “overly ambitious” and failed to account for possible delays, making the plan for the entire project “highly risky,” the report states.
In a heated back and forth over the summer of 2021, the Santa Clara County transit operator rejected the majority of the FTA’s recommendations, saying that the federal agency’s research on tunnel mining rates was “questionable” and deeming its own timeline adequate, according to the documents obtained by this news organization.
“We studied the risk report 10 times to Sunday,” Salpeas, who is heading the extension project for VTA, said in an interview. “It’s not an engineering study, and it’s not a construction cost estimate. It’s a probabilistic ‘what if’ assessment.”
The FTA reviewed the VTA’s rebuttal but also refused to budge on its findings.
In subsequent months, however, the VTA adjusted its timeline. Local transit officials added 10 months to their tunnel mining calendar and reduced their expectations on the rate at which the tunnel will be built to about 36 feet per day, according to Salpeas. Even so, VTA officials insist the tunnel will be constructed without lengthier disruptions to the street as business owners along Santa Clara Street have feared.
After reviewing the FTA’s analysis, Ethan Elkind, a UC Berkeley professor who studies large transportation projections, called it “really hard feedback.”
“There’s a risk that it could undermine ongoing local support and make it really tough now for VTA to kind of have all the numbers add up,” Elkind said. He said that if cost and time overruns force the VTA to again seek funding from Santa Clara voters, “it could really threaten the overall status of the project.”
VTA and BART leaders chose to pursue a new subway-building technique pioneered in Spain after years of designing the extension using the more conventional “twin-bore” tunneling method, which would require tearing up sections of Santa Clara Street for years.
The single-bore method was aimed at minimizing disruptions to businesses and day-to-day operations at ground level by tunneling deeper underground and accessing the tunnel through off-street locations. Officials also said that it would allow for a cheaper and quicker construction process than using the typical dual-bore method.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, a vocal proponent of the single-bore method, stands by that assertion despite the new FTA report but added that VTA should “move forward cautiously” to prevent wider delays and disruptions to downtown San Jose.
“We all know transit projects seem to take too long, but what we don’t want to do is choke the downtown,” Liccardo said.
Transit advocates, however, see this new report as validating their calls to reassess the twin-bore method, arguing that it could allow for a more rider-friendly experience and potentially eliminate some costs and time overruns. They say that the single-bore method, which has never been used to mine a subway tunnel in the United States, could further delay a project that is already years behind schedule.
“It’s really important to pay attention to what the FTA is saying and unwise to be dismissive of it,” said Adina Levin, a co-founder of the group Friends of Caltrain. “What we want at this major milestone is to double-check that we’re doing the right thing.”
