Faced with mounting community pushback to the proposal to eliminate the Alum Rock station, the VTA has changed the dates of its community meeting to November 12th a future date not yet announced, and the VTA board discussion to December 11th. The meetings will cover a VTA staff proposal to apply for federal funding for a 2-station project (Downtown and Diridon), without the stations earlier proposed for Alum Rock or City of Santa Clara.
Television news covered the community meeting last week Thursday where local residents organized opposition to the Alum Rock station cut. The East San Jose station had been the centerpiece of an Urban Village plan that the community had worked on for over a decade, which was an inspiration for the urban village strategy in San Jose’s General Plan, fostering future development concentrated in walkable places near transit.
If you live in San Jose – or if you want to see a great Caltrain/BART connection in San Jose – come to these meetings if you can.
Would be a shame if the BART section to Santa Clara were eliminated. More frequent transit in that part of the county would be a very good thing, and it could spur some helpful transit-oriented development to reduce reliance on cars. BART is also cheaper than Caltrain.
Electrified Caltrain could run more frequent service to minor stops like Santa Clara. That seems more straightforward than adding a whole new BART station.
When you say “BART is cheaper than Caltrain” are you referring to the fares? With better BART/Caltrain connections it would make sense to harmonize the fares.
Alum Rock needs and deserves good transit. It is entirely unfair to exclude East San Jose. It’d also be ignorant as there is a huge ridership base there. Diridon to Santa Clara is redundant and I’d ask that not a penny be spent on it. It doesn’t get any more redundant than having BART running right next to Caltrain. Send it up San Carlos and Stevens Creek Boulevard to DeAnza College if you send it anywhere.
We can cut the cost of building the stations BART mgmt wants, enough to cover the costs of the ones they don’t want, removing their only ‘acceptable’ reason for dropping the Alum Rock and Santa Clara stations, by using available but relatively unused structural geometries and materials.
[…] VTA Postpones Meetings on Plans to Nix Santa Clara BART Station After Uproar (Green Caltrain) […]
Mr. Roadshow article: http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_26854240/bart-stations-san-jose-santa-clara-could-be
With a choice, keeping the Alum Rock station at the expense of the Santa Clara station is a no-brainer… I agree with other posters who see east San Jose as a larger ridership potential than the small spur redundancy from downtown SJ Diridon to Santa Clara… spend that money more wisely VTA!
Channel 2 News at noon: http://www.ktvu.com/videos/news/san-jose-proposed-bart-stations-in-south-bay-may/vCzhjX/
Santa Clara was never necessary as that station is serviced by a free VTA shuttle to the airport and CalTrain. A small people mover from Santa Clara can also be implemented with direct service to the airport in the future.
But the other BART stations HAVE to be there. They HAVE to. 60 years after this should have already been done, we can’t half-ass it. All of the stations or none of them. I don’t care how many sales tax or parcel tax increases it takes. This needs to be done right. We won’t have a chance to fix it if it is done wrong.
Postponing the Santa Clara BART station is a great chance to revisit the stupid decision to not have BART serve the San Jose Airport. If BART can directly serve the San Francisco Airport, there is no reason it can’t directly serve the San Jose Airport after it gets extended from Berryessa. Plus, it would finally provide transit riders a one-seat trip from Downtown San Jose to San Jose Airport, something which was provided until the mid-80s but hasn’t been providede in the about three decades since, even though it has always been needed.
And about the Alum Rock BART station, it makes absolutely no sense to have a transit village there but then take away a huge part of the transit serving it.
I am a resident of Santa Clara County. I do not support any further funding of a BART extension from Alameda County into San Jose.
Instead, those funds must be allocated to the reopening and the creation of a passenger rail link over the Dumbarton line now being starved for funding. The Birthplace of Silicon Valley, (Palo Alto) is being overwhelmed by auto traffic over the Dumbarton vehicle bridge. Restoration of the Dumbarton rail line can provide a major relief to this traffic congestion problem.
Univision 14: http://univision14.univision.com/videos/video/2014-11-04/en-duda-dos-estaciones-del-bart-en-san-jose
The problem is that the politicians do not want to deal with reality regarding its ability to fund the project. It has been that way since 2000. They don’t want to admit that they can’t afford it until the time the economy crashes which brought down sales tax revenue and required cut to bus service. When they ask voters to approve more funding, they make sure they do everything they can to obscure the truth, so the end result is voters approving more taxes and still cannot completely fund it.
The previous general manager Pete Cipolla was fired because he told then mayor Ron Gonzales that the project cannot to done (the Bush Admin was tight about the New Starts process and Gonzales was against the idea of phasing). The 2008 tax was sold on the premise that it is the only tax needed for the project to Santa Clara, but again a year after they settled on going to Berryessa, which has been planning for several years since Chuck Reed took office and Michael Burns at the helm of VTA.
This time the VTA’s new GM is asking all of us to confront reality. It is about time because BART has been a distraction to improve transit throughout the county. This project has been tooted as the Next Big Thing for the last 15 years and we cannot have the rational discussion about other priorities and alternatives. I think the best strategy going forward is to make decision after the Berryessa portion is open. I am not sure whether BART will ever perform like the Next Big Thing, but I think we can agree to let the commuters decide whether or not it is the Next Big Thing.
As for the connection to the airport, Santa Clara location is the most round-about location to make the connection. When the Berryessa station opens, the quickest and most direct connection would be a shuttle bus between the airport and Berryessa station (they’re about 3 miles a part). It would take more than twice as long via Santa Clara. Why would the feds be convinced to spend another billion or more when the travel outcome is the opposite.