A few weeks ago, Santa Clara County and the VTA bought a $460 million dollar drill to dig a new BART tunnel deep under downtown San Jose. This process is the final step in creating a full loop of public rail around the Bay. With the completion of this project, you can go from, say, Gilroy to Walnut Creek, or Fremont to Sunnyvale, on public rail transit alone.
The project to dig a tunnel underneath downtown San Jose will not only expand BART from its current terminus in Berryessa down to Diridon Station but will also connect its line to Caltrain’s rail line from San Francisco to Gilroy as well as various Amtrak lines to cities like Sacramento. Alongside connecting the Bay Area, the rail loop will enable everyone to access many businesses all over the region without having to use a car, reducing traffic on our freeways. However, these benefits will have to wait, as the estimated start date for the project is sometime in 2024.
The Bay’s public transit scene is mediocre, especially in suburban regions like here in Fremont. The fairly “thin” nature of the Bay Area’s built-up area around the Coastal Ranges is somewhat of a benefit, compared to many other metropolitan areas which sprawl out such as Los Angeles. This makes it a bit easier and faster to walk/bike/drive to a transit center.
Meanwhile, north and south of San Jose Diridon, Caltrain’s ~50 mile corridor between San Francisco Station and Tamien Station is now undergoing extensive construction. The electrification of the trains and tracks is well underway; poles and wires have already been installed in numerous track sections. The first electric train set from Salt Lake City has already arrived, with a fully-electric line estimated to be completed in mid-2024, when around 75% of the trains will be completely electric. According to Caltrain, the new electric trains will have a top speed of around 80 mph, will be more frequent, and will be able to carry a higher capacity of passengers than the current diesel trains. This new technology will obviously relieve the notorious traffic on many of the Bay’s freeways.
So how can we convince people to transition to public transportation? A good starting point is to make our roads safer for pedestrians and bikers. San Jose has had 28 pedestrian fatalities (SJPD) as of October 2022, the most of any Bay Area city. Steps are being made to help increase pedestrian safety across the Bay. For example, here in Fremont, you may have seen the annoying corners of the intersections near our BART station. Although annoying for drivers, it has helped increase pedestrian and biker safety. There are many other methods that influence the use of public transit, but safety improvement of our roads for pedestrians is one of the most important.
The completion of the BART tunnel under downtown San Jose along with Caltrain’s electrification will help better connect the Bay Area, and local improvements to pedestrian safety can get more people out of the car and into public transit. There is much to hope for in the next decade, and we can all be more proud of the place we all call home.