After thirty years of planning and amid rising costs and repeated delays, construction on the BART extension to Silicon Valley finally began on Friday.
The massive, nearly $13 billion project involves constructing a 6-mile BART line from the Berryessa Transit Center in north San Jose through downtown and west to Santa Clara and adding 4 stations along the route.
“Transportation creates opportunities,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said Friday at a groundbreaking ceremony on the positioning of the longer term Santa Clara station. “What would San Francisco be without Muni, or New York without the subway? Or London without the tube? In 100 years, people will say the same thing about Silicon Valley.”
When the road opens in 2037, BART riders will save a median of half-hour on a 50-mile commute in comparison with driving, officials say.
The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) will design and construct the South Bay Extension. BART will operate and maintain the road.
Construction on the extension began on Brokaw Road in Santa Clara – which runs between the Caltrain station and San Jose International Airport – and officials said businesses in the world should expect dust and disruption.
Local authorities have secured $15 million to mitigate among the construction disruptions, said Cindy Chavez, Santa Clara County Supervisor and chair of the VTA board. The budget will likely be used for marketing, signage and technical assistance to assist businesses during construction. There can be a grant program that gives affected businesses with as much as $10,000 per yr.
Chavez said the BART project will create 75,000 jobs, most of them union jobs with good pay and advantages.
“This is incredible and really worth the investment,” she said.
In March, the VTA increased its cost estimate by one other $600 million, bringing the whole cost of the project to $12.75 billion.
VTA is requesting greater than $6 billion in federal funding and will learn as early as next month how much money the federal government will provide. That money is predicted to cover about half the price, with the remaining coming from already allocated state and native funds.
The San Jose BART extension was originally scheduled to open in 2026 and value $4.4 billion, however the extension is now expected to take greater than 12 years to construct.
A rapid increase in material, labor and equipment costs, especially throughout the pandemic, in addition to a shortage of expert employees within the Bay Area have led to cost overruns and delays, officials said.
Dozens of elected officials, community members and transportation leaders attended the groundbreaking ceremony and praised the partnerships which were built over many years of labor on this transportation project.
“This project is a marathon where the baton has been passed over many years but never dropped,” said state Rep. Ash Kalra, a Democrat from San Jose. “We will keep pushing until the project is completed.”
Construction begins 4 years after BART launched service from Warm Springs Station in Fremont through Milpitas to Berryessa Station in northern San Jose. Phase 1 included two recent stations on the Milpitas Transit Center and the Berryessa Transit Center.
For Phase II, VTA will construct a single-tube tunnel, which differs from BART's decades-long approach of two smaller, side-by-side tunnels. Critics say the single-tube tunnel is a costlier, riskier and more environmentally damaging alternative to twin-tube tunnels. Some opponents have also criticized the single-tube design for increasing costs.
However, in keeping with VTA, the twin-tube design requires large excavations to construct the underground stations, disrupting the extensive underground utility network and requiring extensive relocation of utilities.
Last yr, VTA spent $76 million on an enormous tunnel boring machine described as a “mechanical earthworm” to excavate and take away more soil from project sites.
Despite the delays, drilling controversy and inflated costs, officials said Friday it was a day for celebration.
“A seamless Bay Area is not possible unless Silicon Valley is connected to the rest of the Bay Area,” Kalra said. “And that won't be possible until this project is completed.”
image credit : www.mercurynews.com