It’s not every day that you get to suggest a name for a ginormous mechanical worm beneath your feet that’s creating the largest single-bore tunnel in the world.
Now, here’s your chance.
Until Nov. 26, The Mercury News is accepting submissions to name San Jose’s BART extension tunneling boring machine, or TBM, which will be carving out a 4.6-mile subterranean pathway below the city and creating a ring of transit around the Bay Area. Cities across the country undergoing similar infrastructure projects have historically named their TBMs after women of local significance. In 2012, Seattle named its device “Bertha” after their first female mayor, Bertha Knight Landes.
Valley Transportation Authority purchased the custom-made, $76 million machine from Germany last week, and it is set to arrive in the South Bay in pieces before being assembled. Work is expected to start between the San Jose airport and Santa Clara University in 2025.
What should Silicon Valley’s TBM be named?
The Bay Area mega project will extend BART service in a U-shaped extension, running six miles from the Berryessa Transit Center in North San Jose, through the city’s downtown core, and then finishing in Santa Clara. It will collectively add four stations and is expected to carry 50,000 passengers each weekday by 2040, according to VTA.
The tradition of naming TBMs after women traces back to the tradition of miners praying to Saint Barbara to keep them safe underground, according to the Museum of London. Barbara was born in modern-day Turkey or Lebanon and became associated with thunder and sudden death after her father, who sentenced her to death, was supposedly killed by a lightning strike and burst into flames — seen as retribution by his daughter. Miners and military men then started grouping her with explosives — and the association stuck.
Numerous other projects around the country — and the world — have used the tradition to name their TBMs. In addition to Seattle’s “Bertha,” Washington D.C. named their TBM “Lady Bird” after the first lady and wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson. San Francisco named one of their machines “Mom Chung” after the first Chinese-American woman to become a physician who worked in the city’s Chinatown.
According to VTA, the agency will conduct its own naming contest in 2024.
San Jose’s BART extension is expected to be completed in 2036 with an estimated cost of $12.2 billion. The project has faced significant delays and cost increases, with officials in October blaming inflation-related economic pressures and new risk assessments. Just weeks after the new projected timeline and pricetag, an oversight committee was formed to investigate why the project was facing such significant setbacks.
When completed, four new stations will be created at 28th Street/Little Portugal, Downtown San Jose, Diridon Station and an above-ground platform in Santa Clara. The project is the second in a two-part phased plan, with the first section completed in 2020 connecting Alameda to Santa Clara County.