Image by Richard Masoner

For the final stop of their insightful analysis on SJ transit (parts I and II here), the Caltrain HSR Compatibility Blog remarks that a BART extension beyond SJ to Santa Clara is highly redundant, considering how connected they already are via Caltrain/VTA. By applying the brakes at SJ’s Diridon Station and going no further north, BART would save $1.5 bn and open up opportunities for more efficient and effectual projects.

San Jose is the tenth largest city in the U.S. (by population), with more people than San Francisco; the city achieves this statistical feat by encompassing 180 square miles.  Such a large and populous city surely deserves top-notch rail transit. BART is widely viewed as top-notch rail transit, which is why the city and VTA (Santa Clara County’s transportation authority) have made extending BART through San Jose their very top priority. …

With San Jose and VTA suffering from a severe case of BART tunnel vision, it’s important to take a more holistic view of what it means to provide the residents and workers of San Jose with a top-notch rail transit network. …

3) End the BART extension at Diridon/Arena

As planned by VTA, the BART to San Jose Phase II project doesn’t just take BART to San Jose, but takes BART beyond the San Jose Diridon/Arena station, veering north to parallel the Caltrain / HSR corridor for a redundant 2.5 miles, ending in Santa Clara.  While this configuration might have made sense long ago when BART harbored ambitions to “ring the Bay” by linking Millbrae and Santa Clara, the present state of affairs argues for a different solution.

From a transportation perspective, it makes no sense to spend ~$1.5 billion of scarce transit dollars (pro-rated from the $6 billion cost of the entire Phase II project) on a 9000-foot tunnel leading to a huge Santa Clara station complex just to provide a third way to ride between San Jose Diridon and Santa Clara, two locations already well-linked by Caltrain and VTA’s 522 express bus.The main argument against truncating the BART extension revolves around a new 69-acre maintenance facility planned at Newhall Yard in Santa Clara. BART argues that Santa Clara and downtown San Jose are too far away from the nearest existing maintenance and storage facility, BART’s main Hayward Maintenance Complex, to be operated efficiently. The HMC is about 21 miles from Santa Clara, requiring long non-revenue runs to stage trains to/from the end of the San Jose extension. While this is admittedly an operationally inefficient arrangement, BART appears to have no qualms operating Phase I (to Berryessa) out of the HMC, over a distance of 14 miles. Cutting back the 2.5 miles from Diridon/Arena to Santa Clara would place the end of the line less than 19 miles from HMC, not so much further from the HMC than Berryessa already is. The HMC itself is undergoing a major expansion, with storage space for an additional 250 BART cars environmentally cleared based on a purpose and need statement that invokes servicing the BART to San Jose extension. Even then, if the HMC Phase II expansion were to prove insufficient and if maintenance and storage demands were truly that dire, a small portion of the $1.5 billion cost avoidance of truncating Santa Clara could be reinvested to provide a new BART maintenance shop at Las Plumas Avenue, an alternative that was considered during the environmental process. Trains could also be stored overnight at Diridon/Arena, to avoid long non-revenue runs at the start and end of the day. The bottom line: the argument that a Newhall shop is a non-negotiable, vital component of the BART to Silicon Valley project is technically unfounded and rests on a stay-the-course-at-all-costs logic that fails to appreciate the opportunity costs of blowing $1.5 billion on a train parking lot.

Another argument against truncating the BART extension concerns a planned airport people mover that would link Santa Clara to the SJC terminals, tunneling under the runways. Using a small portion of the $1.5 billion savings of ending BART at Diridon/Arena, the people mover could run straight to Diridon station, without the need for tunneling under the runways, and connect not just with Caltrain and BART but directly with high-speed rail–seamlessly merging the airport and the train station.

This article originally appeared in the Caltrain HSR Compatibility Blog. Read the whole thing here.

RELATED:

• Transportation professionals on BART extension: Let’s actually examine costs of single vs. twin-bore tunnels
• SJ BART extension makes less sense than ever
• BART director: We’re running out of folks willing to ride again

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