SPUR released an analysis of the financial status of the last phase of the BART connection to San Jose.  It contains a good summary of the current funding alternatives and costs for BART Phase II.

BART to San Jose — courtesy VTA

As they noted, the BART Silicon Valley extension is the largest transportation investment the South Bay will make for decades. It will connect the East Bay and the South Bay with a 16-mile, six-station extension of the BART system. Once completed, the system will connect with Caltrain and form the “ring around the Bay” that generations of civic and business leaders have been working to build.

Under the current plans, construction of Phase II requires the success of the proposed November 2016 sales tax.  However, there are problems developing that could remove that option from the table.

The article focuses on one part of the financial issue, the sources of revenue.  However, there are are more than revenue issues in play here. There are many cost issues that people have identified in the last decade that haven’t been clearly addressed.

We, the members of the community that would will actually use and pay for the final product, need to keep on our toes.  There are a lot of players on the field with many divergent needs and desires.  We need to watch carefully to insure that the needs of the user community, not the financial players, are met by the final product.