Will new Milpitas and Berryessa BART stations open this year? They just missed a key deadline

Transit officials insist that BART’s new Milpitas and Berryessa stations will open by the end of the year. But the project just missed another key deadline for making that goal.

BART was supposed to begin its “pre-revenue testing” process at the two new stops by Oct. 21 at the latest, the date an agency spokeswoman said had to be met if the stations were to open by the end of the year. But the testing did not begin until Monday — a week late. The Milpitas and Berryessa stops are the first phase of the long-awaited extension that will eventually bring trains through Downtown San Jose.

Earlier this month, BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said the agency had figured out a plan to shorten the typically three-month testing process to just over two months. She warned, though, that to do that, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority — which built the extension and turned it over to BART this summer — would have to fix dozens of problems holding up the start of testing by the Oct. 21 deadline.

“Service will not start on December 28, 2019, if VTA does not resolve the discrepancies necessary for BART to start Pre-Revenue Testing by October 21,” Trost wrote in an Oct. 1 email to this news organization. That didn’t happen, and Trost said last week that a handful of problems still needed to be resolved before tests could begin.

Still, BART and VTA officials insisted this week that the project could still open in 2019.

“We are both on track to meet a passenger service date before the end of the year,” VTA spokeswoman Bernice Alaniz said Tuesday.

Asked about the deadlines BART had previously set, Trost said representatives from both agencies met last week to develop a more condensed testing schedule.

Even if the Milpitas and Berryessa stations open in early January, and this latest delay only amounted to a few days or weeks, pushing the opening into 2020 would be a blow for the project that South Bay commuters hoped would deliver them from Interstate 880 gridlock far sooner.

BART’s extension into Santa Clara County has been decades in the making. When the $2.3 billion, 10-mile extension to the north side of San Jose broke ground in April 2012, it was supposed to open by June of 2018. VTA officials at one point claimed the Milpitas station was so far ahead of schedule it could open in 2017.

But a series of problems, including the revelation last fall that a contractor had installed improper communications equipment that needed to be replaced, have delayed the opening several times.

Delays are also pushing back the timeline for bringing BART to Downtown San Jose and Diridon Station. VTA officials acknowledged last month that their estimates for finishing that phase of the extension has slipped from 2026 to 2029 or 2030.

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