Opinion: VTA should abandon $12.8 billion San Jose BART extension that’s already out of date

If you were on the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority board would you double down on a billion -mile underground BART extension that won t be completed until at the earliest or pivot to a smarter more affordable and more flexible alternative The current plan calls for digging a massive tunnel from East San Jose s Berryessa BART station to Diridon Station an effort projected to take more than a decade and if history is any guide likely to suffer from major cost overruns Plus there s another looming challenge Federal funding is in doubt A billion grant from the Federal Transit Administration initially awarded under the Biden administration now faces real danger U S Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has threatened that states not cooperating with federal immigration enforcement may be left out of future infrastructure patronage although he faces a legal challenge to linking the two issues Related Articles VTA allocates money to address traffic in Los Gatos VTA ditches San Jose BART extension tunnel contractor whose estimate was double the budget VTA eyes purchase of downtown San Jose building for safeguard office VTA scouts for tenants for agency s new downtown San Jose HQ VTA recommends dropping controversial tunnel contract for San Jose BART extension over cost VTA executives are now at a crossroads They can scramble for alternative funding a formidable and uncertain prospect wait indefinitely for a potentially more favorable administration or pivot to modern cost-effective transit solutions The South Bay Progressive Alliance has crunched the numbers Solutions like bus rapid transit light rail and personal rapid transit deliver better return on funding at significantly lower cost Importantly VTA already has the legal authority under Measure B passed by voters in to revise its plans when circumstances change With declining sales tax revenue dramatically high construction costs and federal funding unlikely circumstances have clearly changed Yes walking away from years of planning and expenditure is formidable But it s even harder to justify ballooning costs when newer technologies now offer faster cleaner and more flexible alternatives BART is a -year-old system that relies on heavy rail corridors expensive to build costly to maintain and increasingly out of step with the region s necessities Instead of digging deeper VTA should explore promising options like bus rapid transit which can be deployed hastily and adaptively or direct personal rapid transit elevated electric podcars that provide private non-stop point-to-point function from Berryessa to downtown VTA s motto is innovate the way Silicon Valley moves It s time to live up to that promise Every Santa Clara County voter is represented on the VTA board Let your representative know it s time to stop digging and start innovating Rob Means is secretary for the South Bay Progressive Alliance and for LoopWorks the Milpitas podcar company Brian Haberly is an environmentalist and a founding member of the alliance Jonathan Karpf is an emeritus lecturer at San Jose State University s Department of Anthropology and treasurer for alliance