The cost of the long-awaited BART extension through downtown San Jose is on the rise again, adding new fuel to critics who question the project’s final piece: A $500 million segment from Diridon Station to Santa Clara that essentially duplicates Caltrain service.
It will cost $6.9 billion to build the entire six-mile, four-station extension from Berryessa to Santa Clara, according to the latest estimates from Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, which is building the line that BART will operate.
When plans for the project came together more than two decades ago, the fact that both BART and Caltrain would carry passengers between the adjacent stops at Diridon Station and Santa Clara wasn’t considered a glaring problem. Caltrain was then a sleepy commuter railroad with sparse service, and the station near Santa Clara University would be BART’s first step toward one day bringing true mass transit all the way up the Peninsula.
But Caltrain grew through the 2000s, more than doubling its ridership before COVID-19 began chasing passengers away.
Even as the railroad faces the dire prospect of a temporary shutdown later this year because of the pandemic, VTA predicts the BART extension may not open for another decade, giving Caltrain plenty of time to recover and pursue its plans to carry far more passengers thanks to a newly electrified fleet.
So now, in the midst of a global pandemic and recession, even public transit boosters are calling on BART and VTA to drop the Santa Clara stop.
“That segment is redundant,” said Adina Levin, who runs the nonprofit Friends of Caltrain and works with the transit group Seamless Bay Area. “Given the state of VTA’s finances and the state of the transit system, it is the height of irresponsibility to pay for an excessively expensive, risky and redundant design.”
Levin and transit activist Monica Mallon argue the better solution would be to end the BART line at Diridon Station, and save scarce transportation funding for more pressing needs like bus service.
“Things have really changed” since voters approved Measure A to fund the BART extension in 2000, Mallon said. “It’s time for us to reevaluate those plans.”
‘More than a stop’
Supporters counter that the extension will connect BART riders to Santa Clara University, the city’s historic downtown and new transit-oriented developments planned for the area around the twin train stations.
VTA estimates the Santa Clara BART stop will serve 7,800 daily riders in 2035. The Santa Clara Caltrain station averaged 1,074 riders per weekday last year. Capitol Corridor trains from Sacramento and Altamont Corridor Express trains from Stockton also stop in Santa Clara, before continuing on to Diridon Station.
Still, even Teresa O’Neill, a Santa Clara councilmember who represents the city on VTA’s board, was measured in how she assessed the impact BART could have on the community.
“In Santa Clara, it’s not at the top of everyone’s thinking,” O’Neill said, in contrast with how developers and local officials anticipate BART might spur development around new stops in San Jose.
“Would people like it? Yes,” she said of the Santa Clara leg. “Is it the absolute center of economic growth in Santa Clara? Perhaps not.”
Ultimately, the station itself may not be why the segment gets built.
The segment’s price tag also includes a new maintenance facility and storage yard for BART’s fleet, planned for an industrial site VTA has already purchased just southeast of the station. Without it, BART operators would have to run empty trains 24 miles from downtown San Jose to the system’s Hayward yard at the start and end of each day, wasting time and money, said VTA spokeswoman Bernice Alaniz.
“It’s more than a stop,” Alaniz said. Turning trains around at Diridon Station, she added, “Is not the most efficient way.”
BART spokesman Jim Allison called the plan “a prudent and financially-responsible investment.”
$400M cost increase
While Bay Area public transportation advocates desperately want to see BART come to the heart of Silicon Valley, critics say the Santa Clara station is an example of problems with the extension as a whole that are driving up costs.
The latest cost estimate for the four-station extension through downtown San Jose is a substantial increase over the $5.6 billion price tag VTA officials quoted for the project last year. Prior to that, officials had pegged the cost at $4.7 billion.
Alaniz noted those previous estimates did not include financing and contingency costs, which total $506 million, nor another $323 million that VTA has already spent to date on the project. She acknowledged, though, that other costs had risen as planners advanced their design.
Even as costs sail well above $1 billion per mile, VTA officials say that price tag is in line with other recent large subway projects around California, such as San Francisco’s Central Subway and the extension of the Los Angeles Metro system’s Purple Line to Westwood.
VTA is submitting its formal application this month for a $1.7 billion federal grant to help pay for the Berryessa to Santa Clara extension, which it expects to receive this fall. The Federal Transit Administration last year gave the agency a $125 million down payment on its award under the new Expedited Project Delivery grant program.
The rest of the funding for the BART extension will come from the two local sales taxes passed to fund the project, as well as state grants, revenue from transit-oriented developments and money raised in Regional Measure 3, the Bay Area’s bridge toll hike.
The extension is slated to break ground in 2022; if it stays on schedule, service to downtown San Jose and Santa Clara could start in 2029 or 2030.
And despite the criticism that the Santa Clara stop is redundant, there is little sign VTA will reconsider it.
“That’s the project we are submitting,” Alaniz said.