Spiraling costs and debates about the direction and financial stability of Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority caused VTA to pull its request for $750 million in federal funds today. While this isn’t directly related to the ballpark, it at least for the time being kills one of the arguments for a San Jose ballpark: BART access from the East Bay. That news will come into play with the upcoming environmental impact report, which will have to take not having BART into account.

That isn’t to say that BART coming to the South Bay in the future isn’t completely dead, but it will push the expected operation date of 2017-2018 out several more years. It’s possible that VTA will move to an alternative, one that doesn’t involve the expensive downtown San Jose subway that would run underneath Santa Clara Street. Since feasibility of the Fremont/Warm Springs extension is dependent on the South Bay extension, it’s quite possible that Warm Springs (which did not receive federal funding earlier this year) is not happening anytime soon either. That could create a similar albeit lesser negative effect on a Fremont ballpark.