BART to the Silicon Valley: Phase 1 Well Underway, Phase 2 Now on the Way

In an announcement for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, Brandi Childress writes of a critical development in the extension of bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) into the Silicon Valley:

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has given VTA the green light to enter the six-mile BART Silicon Valley Phase II Extension into the Project Development phase of the Federal New Starts funding program. This milestone signifies that VTA has “pre-award authority” to incur costs to advance engineering and design activities to support the environmental review process.

The news was big (and good) enough to draw soundbites out of U.S. Rep. Mike Honda (D-Silicon Valley) and VTA Board Chair and Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez. Childress also provides details about Phase II, as currently conceived: "Phase II of VTA’s BART Silicon Valley Project consists of four stations and a 5-mile tunnel through downtown San Jose, completing the 16-mile extension and vital transit solution to highly congested and constrained I-880 and I-680 corridors."

As for Phase I, otherwise known as the BART Silicon Valley Berryessa Extension, "[j]ust over eighty percent of the construction contract to build the line, track, stations and systems is complete. By spring next year, BART (operator) is expected to begin to test trains on the newly built 10-mile segment."

For more information on the addition of regional transit to the Silicon Valley, an article by Timothy Schmidt and Bernice Alaniz, published by Metro magazine in January 2016, details the history of the project and looks forward to its future.