We don't spend much time talking about BART since it stops in Millbrae (except for some train car storage in B'game) and isn't likely to ever expand south down the Peninsula. But watching the South Bay expansion plans topple over due to climbing costs is instructive. As the Merc notes:
The extension would create six miles of new track — including a subterranean tunnel underneath San Jose — looping BART service from the north part of the city to downtown and then up to Santa Clara at its Caltrain terminal.
South Bay residents shocked by last fall’s price jump for the San Jose BART extension — from $9.1 billion to $12.2 billion — may need to brace themselves again.
In a turn of events that could have major consequences for an extension already struggling with exploding prices and timeline delays, an independent assessment set to be released this month from federal officials may peg the project’s cost even higher than the agency’s $12.2 billion estimate, the Valley Transportation Authority’s chief megaproject officer told The Mercury News in an exclusive interview this week.
In October, VTA announced its most recent cost jump and an expected completion date of 2036 — a decade later than originally expected. The announcement sparked the VTA Board to create an oversight committee investigating issues facing the project.
You know things are bad when a governing body creates an "oversight committee" to shield themselves from criticism for not doing the job they were elected or selected to do themselves. And then there is this common refrain:
The report states, “Due to frequent turnover and vacancies in key (BART San Jose extension) positions, (the Project Management Oversight Contractor) is concerned about the lack of succession planning and inadequate transition periods in dealing with attrition and turnover.”
All of this uncertainty and cost explosion is over just six miles of track! Just imagine what the real numbers for High-Cost Rail are if anyone from Newsom on down were actually paying attention. It can boondoggle the mind.
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