For months, transit advocates have urged the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority to release a highly anticipated report that could determine whether use of a more standard twin-bore tunneling method for the San Jose BART extension could cut millions off the $12.75 billion project cost. The answer could finally come this summer, but the delayed release has raised concerns over transparency as the agency races to close a funding gap that tops $1 billion.
In March 2024, following a push from advocates and several board members, VTA — the agency tasked with building the six-mile, four-station BART extension — said it would conduct an updated cost analysis and “apples-to-apples” comparison between the chosen single-bore tunneling method and the twin-bore approach.
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How the agency will build the tunnel that will eventually deliver passengers from the Berryessa Transit Center in North San Jose, through downtown and up to Santa Clara has been a topic of contention for years.
VTA and BART came to an agreement on the tunneling issue back in 2018. BART initially preferred the twin-bore approach, which would require digging two side-by-side tunnels with shallower stations — a method that has been used throughout the BART system, and that the agency contended is safer. However, it would require some streets in downtown San Jose to be torn up, disrupting local businesses for years and prompting VTA to favor the single-bore approach to dig one massive tunnel deep underground.
Critics have long questioned the 2018 decision, especially in light of the ballooning project cost, which has risen from $4.7 billion in 2014 to $12.75 billion.
In May 2024, VTA told The Mercury News that the report, which would “update the previous estimates of the cost, risks and impacts of the twin-bore design,” would take three months to complete, with work beginning in June 2024. A year later, no report has been released.
Since then, the transit agency learned it wouldn’t receive all the federal funds it had sought and will need to bridge a $700 million to $1.2 billion funding gap. Donald Trump’s election to the presidency has further complicated the situation as he’s pledged to cut federal spending. Last week, he said the federal government won’t finance California’s high-speed rail project, which was supposed to receive $4 billion — less than the $5.1 billion promised by the Biden administration to VTA.
When asked why the report hasn’t been completed, VTA spokesperson Patrice Smith said in an email that the agency is “prioritizing cost reduction to ensure the affordability of BART Silicon Valley Phase II.”
But Barney Smits, a licensed professional mechanical engineer who worked for BART for 25 years before retiring in 2022, believes the report will “highlight the huge amount of money that’s being wasted.”
“Boring a 54-foot diameter tunnel, you’re removing three times as much dirt as you would from the twin-bore design,” Smits said. “You can expect that’s going to be significantly more expensive. The fact that it’s 80-feet underground, whereas the twin-bore design was about 40-feet underground, is again, significantly more expensive.”
The report was crafted by the project’s engineering consultant team, and last August, VTA hired an additional consultant, Gall Zeidler, to provide an independent analysis of the information. Gall Zeidler’s number one task was to provide the independent review, according to a contract reviewed by this news organization. But monthly reports issued by its Principal Narsi Munfah show that the consultant has largely been focused on coming up with cost-saving ideas for the project. The dollar amount of the contract has also grown, with the VTA board increasing the consultant’s budget to $650,000 earlier this year.
A March 5 memo said that Munfah had “completed the review” of the report, and at a May 8 VTA committee meeting, he said his team should be finished providing comments on it by May 28. VTA officials said the report should be finalized and released this summer. Munfah declined to answer any questions about the report, referring this news organization to a VTA spokesperson.
Over the last seven months, The Mercury News has attempted several times to request the report under the California Public Records Act. But each time, the agency has shielded its release, stating that the report is still in draft form.
David Snyder, the executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, said in an interview that in order to justify using that exemption, agencies have to prove several conditions, including that the draft is ultimately destroyed according to their records retention policy and that the public interest in withholding it outweighs the benefit of disclosure. The latter, he said, is a “high bar.”
While Snyder didn’t comment on whether VTA is improperly withholding the twin-bore report, he said that it’s often “in the public interest to be more transparent.”
“Agencies often overuse the preliminary draft exemption in situations where it doesn’t apply in order to keep embarrassing, or in their view, unpleasant information from the public,” he said.
For Smits, the former BART engineer, the delay in the report’s release makes it “appear that there are some shenanigans going on back-and-forth.” In an interview, he expressed concerns about the agency’s lack of transparency and whether the report will be done properly, especially given VTA’s preference for the single-bore method.
Tom Maguire, VTA’s chief megaprojects officer, said at an October 2024 community meeting that they don’t think the twin-bore approach will be a cost savings.
“This is a different way of building the tunnel,” he said. “Not something that we’re recommending.”
Santa Clara City Councilmember Suds Jain, who also serves on the VTA Board of Directors, said he’s become frustrated and concerned about the general lack of transparency over the project and the delayed release of the twin bore comparison.
In an interview before the May 8 committee meeting, he said he hadn’t been able to get an answer on the status of the report. The board, he said, also has little visibility in what’s going on behind the scenes, further complicating the problem.
In 2022, The Mercury News obtained text messages through a public records request that showed VTA officials and ex-San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo tried to hide a Federal Transit Administration analysis that said the BART project would likely cost $9.1 billion. At the time, it was $2.25 billion more than the current budget. Since then, the cost estimate has increased several times, and the project now has a price tag of nearly $13 billion.
“They are so cautious about the numbers that they get us too far down the road and we can’t even make any decisions with these things,” Jain said of transit agency officials. “Give us the bad news early and let the board figure out what we’re going to do about it.”