Milpitas BART Station to Open in December, VTA Says | Hacker News Reader

Milpitas BART Station to Open in December, VTA Says

eastbaytimes.com

66 pointsjseliger43 comments

Funny that BART got to SJ via the East Bay first, but I hope they make the most of it. This does complete a missing (edit: rail) link around the Bay -- though sadly across three different transit systems.

Some time ago I wrote that the geography of the Bay is unfortunate for transit in many ways [1] but notably because there's no express way to get from one side to the other; instead you have to travel along the Ring touching all stops between.

One of the later plans of the HSR along the Caltrain corridor wants to operate it as a hybrid system (which sounds like a big deal, but really just means operating express and slow trains on the same corridor), which would greatly improve mobility between Downtown SF and SJ, as well as regions adjacent to those with zoned trains. Similarly, the Dumbarton Rail Corridor (between Fremont and Palo Alto) would provide a radial transbay option.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12283335

When a large body of water is the primary geographical obstacle, investing in boats seems the logical choice.

Boats, as the saying goes, are holes in the water that you throw money into.

It's generally better to invest up front on a bridge or tunnel. You wind up with a much, much lower cost for daily operations...

There's already a ferry system in the bay to points where it's feasible to to put docks. However, much of the bay is less than ten feet deep, with gentle slopes, which make ferries to other points, especially in the south bay, difficult.

It's worth noting that, at least during weekdays, you can "cut" the bottom of the bay off of your loop using the Dumbarton Express, which goes from Union City BART to Palo Alto Caltrain (ending at Stanford). It runs from ~5:30 or 6 AM to 7 or 8 PM.

More info here: https://dumbartonexpress.com

EDIT: To head off one complaint: Yes, it's an expensive trip ($4.20 one-way). But, if/when Dumbarton rail gets off the ground, I would expect it to cost the same or more.

There's actually already what appears to be a complete but unused (unmaintained?) rail bridge running across the bay parallel to and slightly south of the Dumbarton bridge. I find it curious that it's never used considering how useful it could be.

That's the Dumbarton Rail Bridge, built in 1910 and closed in 1982. The western trestle burned down in the 90s [1] and the swinging part of the span has been welded into a perma-open position. Several studies were done in the 90s and 2000s to restart rail service, including this 2004 one from the San Mateo County Transportation Authority [2]. The bridge itself would have to be significantly refurbished, replacing the movable span and various segments.

[1] http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Mysterious-Fire-On-Trestl... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160318141356/http://www.smcta....

Trains to SF on the Fremont line are already crowded as hell before you even get to Oakland.

If you live there and are trying to get to the city, good luck finding a seat, plan to stand for as long as 30 minutes in a crowded cart.

I hope they thought this through and are adding more trains so that it doesn't make it even more unbearable.

Well if you live in milpitas you can be assured a seat. It will be empty when it starts.

I used to take BART from Fremont to Civic Center daily. Good luck getting a seat after Union City.

There is a San Francisco Chronicle article which answers your point: http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/BART-extension-to...

tl;dr: They need 30-40 more cars. Testing on 10 new ones has found issues (which is the point of testing). Contract says 25 more should arrive by the end of 2017.

Well in many big cities nobody expects to be able to sit on a subway train anytime during peak hours. Where I lived, seats were mostly for seniors, children, people with disabilities. That's just what mass transit looks like in a busy city. It is not unusual for cars to be packed so dense you can't move or even get on a train. And all that with trains coming every couple minutes.

Can someone explain why 162 employees are needed to drive a single station?! This sounds extremely inefficient to me, particularly as it closes as night too. I'm generally curious what the break down would be.

It's open 20 hours a day, so you're going to need at least 3 shifts. It's open 7 days a week, so you're going to need at least two sets of employees per shift, and there are two stations for the extension. When you start considering ticket agents, janitorial staff, security, etc, having 13-14 people on site per shift seems pretty reasonable.

The Washington Metro keeps a single attendant at each station, so maybe 3 attendants per day. And employed what seemed like less than 1 janitorial person per station, given that you only saw one person cleaning at any one time, and that was only for an hour or two each day. You don't need double those numbers for a 7 day week because employees are a system-wide resource.

I understand you're going to need more maintenance personnel, etc, but 162 additional staff for two stations sounds like a concession to the unions. Which in the grand scheme of the whole system might be defensible--more employees as a compromise for capping wage growth. But let's call a spade a spade.

These are completely separate hires from the rest of the BART system. Because Santa Clara County didn't buy into the system in the 60s, choosing to build a network of expressways instead, VTA is operating these stations completely separate of the rest of the BART network. So that means you're going to need redundancies that you wouldn't need if you had a bigger station and employee pool.

How are they separate? The article says,

  [the VTA] is building the new station and handing off its
  operation to BART once complete

Then later on

  Alicia Trost, a BART spokeswoman, said her transit agency
  will ramp up to hire 162 positions, funded by and dedicated
  for the Berryessa extension. She added BART is estimating it
  will cost $27.5 million to provide service at the new
  stations.

Finally,

  VTA will reimburse BART for the cost for staffing the two
  new stations.

I missed the last part the first time through. If VTA agreed to reimburse BART for operating costs, then as a union negotiator it would seem an easy sell for BART to hire an excessive number of employees given that they wouldn't be footing the bill. And in any event, it would be in BART's best interest to inflate its operating cost estimates for the two stations to minimize its risk going forward. Inflating the number of positions needed is one way to do that.

Related, but not mentioned in the article, is that the start of BART service in Milpitas will trigger a large reorganization of the VTA bus network. The existing BART stations with VTA service, and the surrounding region north of Santa Clara county, will lose VTA service as those routes move to target Milpitas.

Also, to be clear, the "Next Network" affects more than the lines connecting to BART, but the opening of the new stations is one of the main reasons for the reorg (another is a change to the coverage/ridership ratio).

More info here: http://nextnetwork.vta.org

This is fantastic. I live in the east bay and have close friends in south SJ. The best option thus far has been going to Fremont, taking the 181 bus to downtown SJ, and ridesharing it down. This will shorten that ride.

Not Capitol Corridor rail direct to SJ?

Single tracked, UPRR has right of way, etc etc etc.

tarbism: To expand on what ZanyProgrammer said:

For most of the East-Bay-to-South-Bay segment (from Santa Clara to around Fremont), there is only one track. That's not unusual in freight rail, but what's missing here are passing points: Long sidings where one train can get out of the way of a passing train.

You can see the route around the bay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoyZC4LvKoI

Also, Union Pacific owns the tracks used by the Capitol Corridor, so priority becomes a question: Yes, passenger rail is supposed to be higher priority, but UP can (and does) charge Amtrak for using the rails. Railroads can (and have) demand that passenger railroads pay to build/upgrade infrastructure as a condition for running more passenger trains.

So yes, it would be doable, but it would be _expensive_.

If you've been to Oakland BART, you've probably seen that in an around that part of Oakland, there are two sets of freight tracks, one set very rarely used.

But its irrelevant till you double track Alviso.

I ride CC every day and it is not that often delayed by freight. But I will switch to BART when it opens in Milpitas because that will be faster and cheaper and with much more frequent service.

As someone who lives in south SJ, I know exactly what you mean. This new station will definitely make things much easier!

I moved to the Bay Area in 1982. I'd heart about BART. "Oh boy, I get to use BART," I thought. And I flew in from the east coast, found an apartment in Cupertino, and . . . no BART. Quickly I found there was no chance in hell I'd get to use it in the south bay. So I drove everywhere. I think I was on BART maybe twice, the whole 20+ years I was in Silly Valley.

In the 90s, San Jose built light rail from useless point A to other useless point B. I couldn't use that, either. So I was still driving everywhere.

I live in the Seattle area now. Still no happy ending, though there was a huge push for a transit expansion (and a corresponding tax increase), and I hear we'll get light rail in our area in maybe ten years. That'll be nice.

"from useless point A to other useless point B."

I laughed at this, but you're right. VTA built the slowest, dumbest light rail system I've ever used. It was nice, and I used it on occasion, but very rarely.

I thought the same thing about DART in Dallas 10 years ago, but it's spread out quite a bit now, finally reaching to DFW Airport and Dallas Love Field.

https://www.dart.org/maps/printrailmap.asp

Maybe VTA will continue to grow like that. One day.

It's a good start, but as someone who live in Cupertino, my options are now:

- Drive to Sunnyvale (15min) and then take CalTrain to SF (45-75min)

- Drive to the Great Mall (30 min) and then take BART to SF (60 min)

Would be nice if they let them electrify CalTrail or bring Bart all the way south. I can keep hoping!

Not sure if the money's there, but VTA has plans to run BART to a location close to San Jose Diridon station. http://www.vta.org/bart/stationsphaseII-diridon

The measure to fund it passed, to the money's there. It's just gonna take 10-15 years to build it.

One of the things on VTA's plan for Measure B funds is to extend the light rail further down 85. So, with any hope, you should have a transit station that's a lot closer.

As a lifelong Bay Area resident, I honestly never thought I'd see this day. I've had a lot of fun teasing my friends in the public sector about their BART/CalTrain extension optimism, but maybe those days are coming to an end...

Oh, don't worry - you've still got the Livermore extension to mock them about. It's only what, 15 years since it was promised?

Did you mean 50 years? Livermore stands in their own way on that project. If they had stuck to the plan of serving downtown Livermore with a direct transfer to ACE then it would already be built. Several board members are dead set against another sprawl-inducing freeway median extension.

Some platform signs are already referring to it: https://twitter.com/enf/status/860516293442543617

It's a shame that all those Warm Springs signs went up a month or so ago and will have to be replaced shortly. I think when the new train cars come the lines will be referred to by color rather than destination, which will fix that problem.

I'll believe it when I see it. You know what they said about Warm Springs...

The Milpitas and Berryessa stations are being built by VTA, not BART like Warm Springs. They're already ahead of schedule and under budget; the original timeline was for them to open in Spring 2018.

I hope that the software problems that plagued Warm Springs have been shaken out and won't be a factor in the Milpitas timeline.

I'd love to see what a $2.3 billion investment in cycling could do for a locality. A quick search says the population of East Bay is 2.5 million – that would be a fairly decent bicycle with lights, locks and helmet for every person. The number of cars taken off the road would make the others flow freely.

And a 50 mile ride to work in Sunnyvale? Get real. I bike everywhere but I also put my bike on a train when that is possible and faster than just riding the bike.

I don't know where your "50 mile ride" comes from when we're talking about a ten mile extension. I put my bike on Bart all the time.

Given ~95% of households in the locality own cars, I assume this extension is addressing congestion or pollution; it's hardly a $2.3 billion investment so 77k people don't have to drive as far to the next Bart stop. I wasn't suggesting taking cars away from people, I was trying to make the existing roads work better, not just in the locality but throughout the area.

[] http://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-v...

It's "only" ten miles, but it connects BART with VTA's light rail system, which means that the 8 miles to Sunnyvale from Great Mall. Given that part of the schedule changes planned for once BART starts is a Mountain View - Alum Rock line, Sunnyvale is a single transfer away. One of the things BART will do is create proper transit hubs in east San Jose, so that a lot more trips have decent transfers and connections.

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