VTA is asking for $6.297 billion in federal funding for the project.
A BART train at the Pleasant Hill station in Walnut Creek, Calif., on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2016. The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority is banking on more than $6 billion from the feds to help complete a ring of rail around the Bay Area with the San Jose BART extension, but the federal agency that holds the purse strings has some sticky concerns.
“The larger bore machine has the potential for slower mining speeds and greater maintenance schedules according to tunnel boring machine research,” the FTA report said. “This has the risk of cost escalation for schedule delays due to the tunneling on the project schedule critical path.”of the twin-bore tunnel design — something the agency never did in years past despite pleas from some transit advocates. Since then, VTA officials have made it clear that they have no intent to change course.
VTA said that its staff is in the process of “updating the Risk and Contingency Management Plan” to be included in the agency’s submission for the federal grant money. “Closing the sidewalk on the south side of West Santa Clara Street during the construction period will result in new or substantially more severe impacts on transportation, emergency access and hazards, among others,” lawyers for the team wrote in one of the letters. “If the sidewalk on the south side of West Santa Clara Street is closed, it is reasonably foreseeable that vendors will be displaced to the north side of West Santa Clara Street and other areas around SAP Center.
In May, the FTA committed $3.4 billion to the Transbay Downtown Rail Extension Project that will extend Caltrain from the Fourth and King streets station to the Salesforce Transit Center in downtown San Francisco. Project designers had asked the feds to cover 49.4%, or $4.077 billion, of the total cost. However, the feds ended up only allocating money for 41% of the project.
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