Biden proposes $500 million boost to Silicon Valley BART

The Biden administration on Thursday proposed a $500 million allocation to build BART through San Jose, a vital revenue boost to a project racked by escalating budget projections.

The announcement helps bring the 6-mile extension, which is supposed to be finished by 2034, one step closer to reality, although the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority still needs to close a multi-billion dollar gap between project costs and available funding.

“It’s definitely significant,” said Carolyn Gonot, VTA’s general manager. “There were only a handful of projects that got very large sums in the President’s budget.”

The $9.3 billion extension would have BART trains whizzing underneath downtown San Jose and into Santa Clara. But the cost and time estimates have doubled since 2018, and more recently the VTA turned to Washington asking for a historic $4.6 billion federal grant. Currently, the Federal Transit Administration has agreed to fund up to $2.3 billion.

Thursday’s announcement is a major milestone in VTA securing enough federal dollars for the massive undertaking. The agency has successfully moved the project to a separate federal funding category called New Starts, which paves the way for a doubling of Washington’s contribution to the South Bay extension.

If the federal funding is secured, the Santa Clara County project would be among the biggest single-project federal grants backed by the Biden administration’s trillion-dollar infrastructure bill. The $14.6 billion Gateway rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey also landed $700 million in Thursday’s budget proposal and New York City’s Second Avenue Subway grabbed $496 million.

But even as Washington goes on a spending blitz, ballooning budgets at the VTA and around the country mean taxpayers are seeing far less transit infrastructure from the historic funding bill.

“There is some inflation panic, and materials panic and labor panic,” said Eric Goldwyn, a New York University professor who studies transit project costs. “So we are getting less for every dollar we put out there.”

There remain several hurdles for VTA to secure the federal funds, including congressional approval of Biden’s proposal. Republicans, who took control of the House of Representatives in January, previously dubbed the BART extension “Nancy Pelosi’s Silicon Valley subway” and sought to restrict funds.

The VTA also needs to line up other state funding sources to unlock the matching federal dollars. BART needs another $375 million from the same state transit program that Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to slash due to California’s looming budget shortfall.

Speaking to reporters, Nuria Fernandez, the Federal Transit Administration head, said Washington’s contribution, if approved by Congress, will be made available only if the agency secures a final construction agreement.

The VTA plans to secure the agreement in 2024 after tying together all the funding streams. Gonot, the VTA general manager, has vowed that the agency will not pursue another local ballot measure to fund the project.

“Those will be appropriated dollars that would remain available to them, but they could not access (the funds) until there is a construction grant that has been signed,” said Fernandez, who oversaw the BART extension as VTA general manager until early 2021, before moving to Washington.

If completed by 2034, the BART extension would be up and running 34 years after voters first approved the project.

While funding remains tricky, the project is barreling ahead. The VTA is looking to seize rights to dozens of properties where the tunnel will burrow underground. The agency is also in the process of ordering a $460 million drill, known as a tunnel-boring machine, to mine one of the world’s largest subway tunnels.

Along with tunneling, the VTA is looking to assuage the concerns of project critics by improving passenger access and limiting the number of escalators at some of the project’s four new stations.