When San Jose pushed for a deep-bore tunnel on the downtown BART extension, one of the criticisms heard repeatedly was the station access issues. So it is bizarre that Mayor Liccardo would only now criticize staff for producing a station design lacking entrances:
For San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and Councilmember Raul Peralez, who both sit on the VTA board, the higher budget or delayed opening wasn’t as much of a concern as the lack of pedestrian access to the planned Downtown San Jose BART station. The lawmakers called for a second downtown station entrance. The lively session on Friday included discussion of changes to the current plan, with board members representing San Jose raising flags about the concept for the BART station set to be built downtown.
The current plan only includes one main entrance — located just north of Santa Clara Street — across an already-busy intersection from many of San Jose’s largest employers and attractions.
“I’m just very concerned about setting ourselves up for having pedestrians cross and clear (Santa Clara) when we know the number of assets in downtown where we expect people to be coming from… San Jose State University, City Hall, Adobe world headquarters, Zoom headquarters, all the entertainment venues,” Liccardo said. “All of those are south of Santa Clara.”
VTA’s off-the-cuff estimate for the addition of a second, south-of-Santa Clara underground entrance to the station would be in the $100 million range.
Major downtown metro and rail stations typically have entrances going off in multiple directions. The SJ downtown stop will have just the single entrance.
This is typical of VTA: parochial, limited, suburban thinking, with no data behind any decision.
The deep tunnels also mean that getting from the platforms of the VTA-designed stations to the surface will take quite a while. Transferring at Diridon could require an absurdly long ten minute walk between BART and Caltrain.
But why only two exits? Also, a HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS to cross the street? Is the station made of platinum?
Given all the ridiculous failures like this, you have to conclude that no one at VTA has ever been to a big city and seen how a large transportation system actually works.
Still can’t get over that $100 million figure for a hundred feet of pedestrian tunnel and an elevator. Probably the VTA sandbagging so they don’t have to do it.
For that kind of money, every station in San Jose could have the design quality of stations in other cities. http://mic-ro.com/metro/metroart.html