Delays on Delays: Milpitas and Berryessa BART stations definitely will not open in 2019

SAN JOSE — When the clock strikes midnight on the last day of December, it will not only mark the beginning of a new decade but another delay piled on top of years of unfulfilled promises for the new Milpitas and Berryessa BART stations.

After months of insisting upon a late December opening date, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority has finally announced that the two new stations will not open in 2019 after all. In fact, officials won’t even say when in 2020 they expect the stations to open.

“I don’t have a new date,” VTA Spokesperson Bernice Alaniz said in an interview Monday. “We are just now laying out all of the activities that need to be done in this new sequence, so I do not want to speculate on what a date would be right now.”

Up until Friday, VTA and BART engineers were conducting testing on the tracks simultaneously as BART also began “pre-revenue testing” — exercises with first responders and scenarios meant to stress-test the new systems by simulating day-to-day problems. It was part of a plan announced by BART last month to shorten the typically three-month testing process to just over two months.

But the plan, which required VTA and BART engineers and employees to access the tracks and operating systems concurrently, “was getting increasingly complicated,” according to Alaniz.

Instead, VTA — which built the extension and turned it over to BART this summer to manage — will solely work to finish its testing and needed repairs identified by BART. Once completed, BART will conduct its final round of testing to ensure the tracks, services and employees are ready to serve commuters.

“There’s an added sort of layer of having an owner that is different from the operator, and when you’re signing off on accepting the project, there are two different entities that need to do that,” Alaniz said. “You can take your best guess on how it’s going to be accepted, but it’s when you get out there and put it in real life that you see there might be slight modifications needed.”

San Jose Councilmember Lan Diep, whose district includes the Berryessa neighborhood, said he was disappointed with the delay but agreed that public safety was most important.

“What we don’t want to do is to open on some artificial, expected date and then have service not be what riders expect,” Diep said.

The Milpitas and Berryessa stops are the first phase of a decade-in-the-making extension of BART that will eventually bring trains from Fremont’s Warm Springs stop south through downtown San Jose.

VTA is also funding and building a $5.6 billion BART extension with four new stops from the Berryessa Station to Santa Clara, including San Jose’s Diridon Station. The agency, however, acknowledged last month that it also pushed back the estimated opening of those stations from 2026 to sometime in 2029 or 2030.

Elizabeth Alexis, a co-founder of Californian Advocating Responsible Rail Design, said the years of delays have “real consequences on commuters” and offers dim hopes for the larger expansion plans.

“It’s concerning given that the next project is a $6 billion, much more complicated project,” Alexis said. “What does this say about the relationship between BART and VTA? If they can’t work together on this, how are they going to get that project done?”

VTA and BART are currently working on an updated work plan. In the meantime, VTA still plans to launch its new transit service plan for buses and light rail — which will modify some existing bus routes and add some new routes to accommodate commuters from the new Berryessa and Milpitas transit centers — on Dec. 28.

Bus lines 180 and 181, which provides service to commuters from San Jose to the closest BART station in Fremont, will continue to operate until the new BART stations open.

“VTA and BART are working as safe and expedient as possible to bring this to Santa Clara County as soon as possible,” Alaniz said. “We’re very appreciative of the public’s patience as we take this next step to ensure that.”

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