San Jose’s BART extension, one of the nation’s priciest transportation projects, will get a watchdog after transit officials recently revealed exploding price estimates and a significantly delayed timeline.
On Friday, the chair of the Valley Transportation Authority Board of Directors announced the project would be under the eye of an oversight committee that will review problems going forward, provide recommendations and probe the project’s financials.
“This committee will be responsible for overseeing all aspects of the project,” Chairperson Pat Burt said. It will report to the full VTA board “on any and all issues that raise concern.”
Burt — who as chair has the authority to form the committee — recommended the members include himself, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and Councilmembers Dev Davis and Omar Torres, Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez and City of Santa Clara Councilmember Sudhanshu “Suds” Jain. The transit agency’s auditor general also will be involved with the group.
On Oct. 4, VTA officials announced the project’s cost would increase to $12.2 billion, more than twice the initial estimate. It is now expected to open in 2036, a decade behind schedule.
The project is funded by multiple local tax measures, as well as federal dollars promised in 2021. Transit officials have maintained residents won’t see another measure to help financially bolster the project.
The six-mile, four-station extension would create a ring of rail service around the Bay Area and an underground tunnel beneath downtown San Jose. The U-shaped path will run from Berryessa Transit Center in North San Jose, looping down into the city’s downtown core and up towards Santa Clara.
The formation of the watchdog group comes after calls for more transparency concerning the project’s pricetag and construction delays. The original estimate in 2014 was cost of $4.7 billion and a 2026 opening. South Bay officials like former San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery are among those seeking better oversight.
Since this month’s update by the transit agency, Mayor Mahan said he is open to an independent analysis of the extension. But as a major proponent of the project, he said it should not derail the overall plans.
“I have heard anecdotally in conversation some folks who have said, ‘Oh we ought to audit that thing.’ And who I know are folks who just simply don’t believe in the project,” Mahan said. “I think this is one of these projects that is of such regional significance that we need to just get going on it and complete rail around the Bay. The benefits will accrue for generations to come.”
In a statement on Friday, Mahan said the committee “must push back on rapidly rising soft costs, especially in the form of consultants and professional services, and get actual construction underway.”
The price jump has mostly been attributed to issues related to economic pressures spurred by the pandemic — a phenomenon that other transit projects around the country also have faced. The timeline setback is being blamed on updated engineering and risk assessments.
Friday’s meeting was devoted to explaining in more detail the project’s issues.
Much of the swelling costs — $1.1 billion — come from construction material costs that have skyrocketed since 2020. Contracting for concrete installation and electrical services has climbed by roughly a third, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another $750 million bump stems from the project being pushed out three years.
As for the project’s delay, a whopping 26 months can be attributed to the machine that will be cutting a 4.7-mile subterranean pathway underneath San Jose — the largest single-bore tunnel for transit in the country. Officials said Friday that both the prep work to get the machine into the ground and the mining process itself would be taking extra time.
Yonah Freemark, a D.C.-based transportation expert, said American cities face unique challenges compared to their counterparts in Europe and Asia when it comes to building out projects like rail. Outside of the U.S., said Freemark, there are much greater concentrations of transportation expertise.
“We have seen this with California High Speed Rail,” he said. “It becomes this self-reinforcing thing. Consultants get paid more. Then cities and states are reliant on them to do the work. Then it just repeats the cycle over and over again.”
The comparison to other countries wasn’t lost on Gary Griggs, the chief program manager for the BART extension.
“While we’ve been doing the studies on high speed rail (in) California, and we’ve got good construction going on in the Central Valley, China has basically connected every major city in their country with high speed rail,” he said. “So, other parts of the world are able to do things more quickly. And we need to find a better way to do it here.”