On Friday, VTA announced that the federal government would fund $5.1Billion toward the BART Silicon Valley project, about 41% of the cost of the project, currently estimated at $12.7 billion. This leaves a gap of $1.2Billion from the amount that VTA had been requesting, and a gap of $700million to complete the project, following the recent reallocation of $500 million in Measure A funds in late June. General Manager Gonot told KQED that VTA would be looking to close the gap via cost savings, and board chair Chavez said at the press conference that the agency would seek to renegotiate contracts.
The 41% federal share of the project is similar to the recent federal contribution to the Portal project connecting Caltrain to the Salesforce terminal, which faces a gap of about $2.5 billion. That project is on hold pending additional funding.
The BART Silicon Valley project broke ground in June while waiting to hear about the amount of federal funding.
Meanwhile, design work continues on stations, including major open questions about the Diridonstation where questions remain about both sides of the BART/Caltrain connection.
At today’s VTA BSV2 oversight committee meeting, it was pointed out that the $500m in Measure A funds would, if ultimately put toward the project funding shortfall would be the very last of Measure A funds.
Also, it was repeatedly mentioned that VTA staff is doing everything it can to keep the project moving despite the need to find $700m in savings or additional outside funding to unlock & access the $5.1b FTA pledge because every month of delay was said to result in $30-40m in cost escalation.
There is increased interest and openness in oversight committee members to having an independent review of the deep single vs. shallower, more user-friendly double bore issue … with an eye toward potential cost savings which may help resolve the funding gap.
Staff claimed that rather that the 40% (not 41.5%) that the $5.1b FTA pledge currently represents could change if the project cost went up or down because the pledge is in dollars — not a percentage.
Director Burt said he wouldn’t trust that staff understanding unless they obtain it in writing from the FTA.
Depending on how it is calculated, the new TBM launch “box” cost has soared from around $140m to around $525m. Committee members and staff agreed that the cost increase calculation did not reflect certain offsets that would result in significantly smaller figure closer to $300m.