Long considered a good idea, getting BART to San Jose continues to be a struggle — despite the generosity of South Bay voters, who have twice raised their sales taxes, and support from the tech industry.

After already curtailing plans for a Silicon Valley BART extension once, South Bay transportation officials are retrenching and considering cutting back again, this time by eliminating two stations from a future extension now seeking funding.

The original plan for BART to San Jose, hammered out between BART and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in 2001, envisioned a line taking off from Fremont, now the end of the line, and extending all the way to Santa Clara, passing through a subway beneath downtown San Jose en route.

Two key stretches of that line are under construction. BART is extending its tracks to the Warm Springs area of south Fremont, near the Tesla plant, and expects to start running trains to the new station late in 2015. At the same time, the VTA is building a 10.2-mile extension that BART will operate south to Berryessa in northeast San Jose. VTA expects it to open near the end of 2017.

But the dream of taking BART to downtown San Jose — or beyond, first envisioned in the 1960s — clashed with reality and had to be scaled back to improve the project’s chances of winning federal funding.

First, VTA officials pulled back on their plans to go downtown and on to Santa Clara, citing a low rating for competitive federal funding and depleted sales tax revenues caused in large part by the tech crash of the early 2000s. After regrouping, Silicon Valley leaders decided to go only as far as Berryessa and to ask voters to raise their sales taxes to make sure the extension could cover its operating costs. Voters narrowly approved the measure in 2007, in the depth of the recession.

Now, with construction well under way on the truncated BART extension into Santa Clara County, VTA is looking to piece together enough money to build the second phase. And, once again, the feds are hinting that the project would have a better chance if it were cheaper.

Bernice Alaniz, a VTA spokeswoman, said the agency has made no decision on whether to eliminate any stations but raised the idea as a possibility because it’s looking at how to cut costs to make the project more competitive in the federal New Starts program, which provides big money that makes it possible to build big projects.

“It’s competitive, so you have to put the best project forward — and you have to have a valid funding plan,” she said.

Ambitious version

The 6.1-mile second phase of the Silicon Valley BART extension calls for construction of stations in Alum Rock in east San Jose, downtown near San Jose State University, at Diridon Station and the SAP Center arena and, finally, in Santa Clara. The latest estimates place the cost at $4.7 billion.

The criteria for capturing federal New Starts funding take into account ridership, cost, economic benefits, and the amount of housing and job development the project would create. Reducing the cost while keeping ridership as high as possible makes the project more competitive.

More demand for funds

Growing mass-transit ridership around the country has spurred more interest in public transportation projects — and more competition for federal funding, which is not increasing and not expected to under the current Congress. Already, 13 rail transit projects are seeking federal New Starts funds, and more are expected to enter the competition.

VTA earlier this month raised the possibility of eliminating stations after taking a closer look at the revenues coming in from its sales tax measures, the costs of building the Berryessa Extension and updated costs for the proposed extension to Santa Clara. Then the agency looked at ways to reduce its cost — and improve its cost-per-passenger numbers — to make the project more appealing to federal officials.

Eliminating two stations would cut the price tag by about $1.4 billion, Alaniz said, and since the downtown San Jose and Diridon stations have the highest ridership projections, the best choice would be to do without the Santa Clara and Alum Rock stations.

“We were simply laying all our cards on the table,” Alaniz said. “We were not making a recommendation.”

Nevertheless, residents and leaders of those communities were not pleased at the possibility of their stations disappearing — or at least being delayed for years. So the VTA has decided to work with them and to continue studying the project for a year before deciding how to cut costs or make the project more competitive.

Carl Guardino, executive director of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, said he’s confident that a plan can be worked out that would save the stations. Part of the solution, he said, could be another sales tax measure that would appear on the ballot in 2016. The organization, a business coalition with many tech-industry members, backed the two earlier tax measures, which are still bringing in revenue, and has been a strong advocate of bringing BART to the South Bay.

More optimistic

“We have to be competitive for federal funds,” he said. “But our view is that we can deliver all 6.1 miles with all the stations attached.”

Randy Rentschler, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which coordinates transportation planning and financing in the Bay Area, said the difficulties of designing and running a high-ridership transit system in a car-oriented city like San Jose make it more critical that the project keep down its costs.

“They’ve made, and continue to make, the tough choices to put BART to San Jose in the best position nationally,” he said. “You build what you can afford, and you add the rest later. This is a path that can work.”