By Khalida Sarwari
Vice Mayor Evan Low and city manager Amy Brown were given a tour of the first phase of the extension of BART into the South Bay last week, a month after the transit agency broke ground on the future Berryessa Station in San Jose.
The officials were guided by Santa Clara County Valley Transportation Authority representatives Brent Pearse and Bernice Alaniz along the 10-mile extension beginning in Fremont and ending in San Jose’s Berryessa neighborhood.
Once completed, the extension will offer a number of advantages to the public. Most notably, it will save time for saving passengers traveling from the South Bay to San Francisco, especially during commute hours on crowded Interstate Highway 880. The Diridon Station will serve as the point of connection for Campbell residents.
“It provides a transit alternative to some really congested corridors,” Alaniz said.
The project will also boost the regional economy, said Alaniz, by creating roughly 2,500 jobs during the first five years of construction alone.
Due to the complexity of a project that spans two counties and three cities, transit officials have had to develop a strategic phasing plan for construction, said Alaniz.
Funding for the $2.3 billion Berryessa extension project has been secured through the VTA’s Measure A Transportation Improvement Program. Measure A, which authorized a half-cent sales tax for transit improvements, was approved by Santa Clara County voters in 2000. In March, BART secured a $900 million federal grant to cover the remaining cost of the project’s first phase.
VTA awarded a $772 million contract to joint venture group Skanska-Shimmick-Herzog for the construction of the first phase of the project, slated to be completed by early 2017.
The second phase of the 160-mile extension into Santa Clara County includes a 5.1-mile subway tunnel through downtown San Jose, and ends in Santa Clara near the Caltrain station. When completed, the project will include six stations, including one in Milpitas, four in San Jose and one in Santa Clara, a 5-mile tunnel in downtown San Jose and a maintenance and storage facility in Santa Clara.
