The Valley Transportation Authority board will resolve Thursday night whether or not to approve an unbiased assessment of its contentious BART extension design, together with awarding a significant contract billed because the mission’s “foundational spine.”
If each agenda gadgets are permitted, the VTA board might be within the uncommon place of concurrently awarding a $235 million contract that strikes ahead with the mission’s “single-bore” tunnel design, whereas additionally authorizing an out of doors agency to assessment key design components of a mission that's steadily progressing as deliberate.
San Jose Mayor and VTA board member Sam Liccardo together with VTA Chair Chappie Jone and board member Raul Peralez are calling for an unbiased assessment of the mission. In a memo launched Wednesday, the trio requested VTA to “allow a further unbiased evaluation to be carried out on the single- and dual-bore choices, constructing on the unbiased analyses supplied by outdoors companies and huge metro transit companies in 2017.”
The evaluation, they wrote, ought to present a “clear view of the trade-offs” between the 2 tunneling strategies, together with passenger security, rider expertise, price, and building delays.
“This memorandum doesn't represent a ‘reversal,’ as a result of the single-bore design stays the Board-reviewed proposed mission,” Liccardo’s spokesperson Rachel Davis wrote in a Wednesday information launch.
“Fairly, the proposals mirror a continuation of the unanimous public vote of the San José Metropolis Council in December 2021 to encourage VTA to completely and publicly vet options and choices in mission design previous to the ultimate vote on the mission,” she added.
The brand new memo and VTA board vote come because the six-mile, four-station BART extension by downtown San Jose faces criticism over a federal evaluation that pegged the anticipated price at $9.1 billion – a $2.25 billion enhance over the present price range.
In the meantime, textual content messages not too long ago obtained by the Bay Space Information Group reveal that Liccardo and VTA’s Takis Salpeas, who's heading the extension for VTA, sought to maintain the federal price figures from the general public, saying the secrecy was mandatory to save lots of taxpayer cash.
In gentle of the federal evaluation, transit advocates and a rising variety of BART board members for months have been calling on the VTA to reassess its tunnel and station designs.
Critics say VTA’s plan to mine one of many world’s largest subways with a single-bore tunnel as a substitute of a extra typical dual-bore design may compromise long-term rider expertise and probably result in ballooning prices. They are saying the deeper single-bore system would restrict entrances to stations and require riders to descend a maze of escalators to get from the road to BART trains.
Supporters of the single-bore design say it could keep away from chaos on Santa Clara Road by minimizing floor stage disruptions, whereas shallower dual-bore building would require tearing up swaths of the road. Additionally they say switching to a dual-bore would require new environmental clearances tacking years extra of delays onto the mission.
Ought to the board choose to conduct a brand new evaluation of the 2 choices, questions stay over who will oversee the assessment and the way a lot influence, if any, it could have on the mission’s design as Thursday’s contract lays the groundwork for the mega mission’s single-bore tunnel.
Influential Bay Space organizations, together with the general public coverage suppose tank SPUR, the Bay Space Council, and the Silicon Valley Management Group, are calling on the transit company to co-lead the assessment with BART and the San Jose Division of Transportation.
“We don’t need to get right into a place that an unbiased assessment determines one thing ought to go in one other route, however it’s already been baked in,” Rebecca Saltzman, president of the BART board mentioned.
Enterprise homeowners like George Lahlouh, a co-owner of the bar Miniboss, which might be situated adjoining to the longer term downtown San Jose station, need to see the least disruption potential.
“It’s a scary thought to have one thing like this looming,” Lahlouh mentioned in an interview. “I hope that the choice that they make is in the very best curiosity of not solely the price range however the comparatively small variety of companies serving to to maintain the downtown core alive.”
If Kiewit Shea Traylor – a consortium of three main building corporations – is awarded the $235 million contract on Thursday, it should set the stage for the intensive tunnel mining and building efforts which might be anticipated to price billions of dollars and take years to dig.
Salpeas stays adamant that a single-bore is one of the simplest ways ahead.
“I consider what we've got in entrance of us now could be the best determination,” mentioned Salpeas, including that engineers want to enhance riders’ station entry whereas sustaining the present tunnel mining expertise.
“Don’t inform me that the dual bore might be cheaper than the single-bore. Go go to Hollywood,” added Salpeas in an interview this week, referring to the rising prices of Los Angeles’s Purple Line subway extension.
Nonetheless, the VTA is seeing main price overruns on contracts that it has already awarded for the BART extension. VTA employees on Thursday will even be asking the board to approve a $34 million enhance to a contract with Mott MacDonald and PGH Wong Engineering. The revised contract of $196 million could be 57% increased than the preliminary award in 2019.
“That is all labor prices,” mentioned Salpeas.