BART's extension into Santa Clara County continues even as it fails to meet ridership expectations

Imagine building a bridge that doesn't quite reach the other shore and then saying "this bridge was such a bad idea! no one's using it!" That's how America builds transit.

BART to San Jose will be a game changer! We need to build it now! People will definately come and use! Just give it time!

Keep going. We need to design cities for people, not cars.

It needs to get built. It's shortsighted to base ridership projections on the last 3 years because of Covid and the subsequent work from home scenario. However, that's changing now and more employers are requiring employees to come back in the office. Ridership will continue to increase going forward. The more comprehensive a system, the more people will use it. A very clear example of that was the Regional Connector that opened on LA Metro in 2023. After it opened, ridership increased noticeably because it made the system faster and more convenient.

Keep building it.

I take Bart from Oakland to Berryessa/North San Jose once a week, and then bike or bus to downtown SJ. All my coworkers think I'm crazy. And maybe I am. The multimodal journey is not for the faint of heart. I'm not the only one doing it, but if it was a simple train ride all the way to downtown I can guarantee you there'd be 1000% more.

It would seem to almost be common sense that ridership figures would skyrocket if the line were extended to downtown San Jose and linked up with Caltrain in Santa Clara. Currently the line ends in sprawling suburbia. Not exactly conducive to attracting high ridership figures.

This will be important because timed transfers makes public transport much more convenient. The few times that two NYC subway trains actually meet their schedule and I transfer saves a lot of time. You want a good public transport system it needs to be fast, convenient, and actually connect where people want to go. Parking lots are terrible for transit, but a park and ride garage in a mixed use development can do a lot.

Outside of the core system in SF/Oakland/Berkeley, the environment around the stations are oriented towards automobiles and not people, without much destinations developed around them.

This is a no brainer... Berryessa is a sprawly suburb not optimized for any sort of transit, so it's obvious why no one is riding to/from there. Once it connects with the dense housing, jobs, and schools in Downtown San Jose--and what's set to become the Grand Central station of the west (Diridon)--the ridership will come. On top of that, when (hopefully not if) CAHSR is finally connected to the Bay Area, this extension will serve as the entry point to the BART system into the East Bay from every point south of Diridon.

Yet, rarely have planners ummed and ahhed over need & demand when deciding about building a four lane highway🙄. Besides, maybe the extension could have been constructed faster & cheaper if the NIMBYs hadn't demanded on twin-bored tunnels as opposed to an elevated viaduct or possibly a cut-and-cover tunnels just below street level

I lived in San Francisco from 1991-1993. I would’ve loved to have been able to BART from The Embarcadero Sta. to Milpitas and take the bus to work in San Jose. I was so tired of driving to work, I moved to SJ. BTW - my SJ 1 brm apartment downtown was $564. utilities and parking included. 🙀

We need this project. Finish it!

Trains into downtown are the best. Delays are usually caused by objections which causes it to cost more.

The riders aren’t going to come as long as the system is unsafe. But also, imagine if they decided to stop building the interstate system way back when because not enough people were using it because there just wasn’t great enough car ownership. America just doesn’t know how to build anything anymore unless there isn’t an immediate return that aligns with expectations. That’s why we can’t get that high speed train built in a reasonable amount of time compared to what other countries can accomplish because they plan and then fund and then plow forward and get it done instead of argue about it.

BUILD IT!!!!

We should be expanding BART 10x more than this, at a much faster pace too. The Bay Area has the economy and political climate to be a leader in the transition away from fossil fuels and car-dependency, but corruption and complacency get in the way of it. BART was born from ambition, a first-in-the-nation system funded almost entirely by local tax dollars. We need to bring that spirit back and invest similarly large amounts of money into turning BART into a true regional transportation system, serving all of the Bay Area with fast and affordable transportation which beats driving in nearly all situations. Couple that with urban metro systems in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and Oakland - plus Amsterdam-style protected bike lanes and sidewalks on all our roads - and needing to drive to get around the Bay Area will be a thing of the past.

I’m With The General Manger ! She knows what’s up & thinking of the long run not for a money grab . Bart would be a game changer if you could go to every single county . Like Marin , Sonoma , Sacramento .

We also need more TOD around BART stations in Fremont and Santa Clara County.

If there was a single station in San Francisco (no cheating either by having it one of the often used Market Street stations) BART wouldn't get many riders in SF either. A single station in San Jose will only take people out of the city who live near by otherwise it's a coinflip to whether they take Caltrain to SF (if that's where they're going) or BART, most likely in Santa Clara they'll stick with VTA, but a number of stations in the city and properly placed areas and BART becomes useful as an in-city transit as well. Now I have no idea if the San Jose stations are going to be in useful areas, i.e. near LOTS of places with jobs and so forth, but that lady was right with here statement "Today is the cheapest it will ever be". So VTA/San Jose needs to make those hard decisions