It’s happening.
Bolstered by the release of $250 million in funding, the BART-to-Silicon Valley project got its official groundbreaking earlier Thursday afternoon. Representatives of BART, VTA, plus East and South Bay politicians were on hand for the ceremony. Also there was reader @MarkyJ824 to take pictures. He sent many of them to me and I’ll repost them below.
December’s article looking at the BART project explains how fans would get to Cisco Field/Diridon Station from the East Bay. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s worth a look.
More shovels to come
Poster of Berryessa Station rendering.
A BART car model on site. Hopefully it has the new anti-pathogen seats and floor.
The subway portion of the Warm Springs Extension is still under construction, and the line is expected to open for service in late 2015. The $2.3 billion BART-to-Silicon Valley project will get a total of $900 million from the federal government. Construction to Berryessa is expected to be completed by 2016, but could be done earlier. Testing should take another two years, putting passenger service at 2018, possibly earlier.
newballpark.org 
@ML- Great article! I’m glad you could use my pics.
Around an hour and a half from where I’m at. Boy, that would be a long BART ride. Still, it’s about time this happened.
Great news. Thanks for pix and post, MarkyJ & ML.
@RM,
by the way, is that you wearing the Sharks /A’s gear? If so, save the golden shovel for Cisco Field ;).
Questions: will we see actual construction of the Berryessa station this year AND will the Flea Market now be closing?
Bart’s coming to SJ and hopefully the A’s will follow. Just bought me one of these to celebrate…
@Tony D. – Not me, I wasn’t present. The project still has to work on the right-of-way stuff first. The station can be built as they’re finishing the project.
lets hope when the a’s move down to sj and they decide to have an interlocked sj a’s hat that they don’t use that one since it’s basically the sjg’s logo but only in green and gold.
@Dan: Nice.
.
For the inevitable, eventual SJ A’s cap, I hope they go with something simple, maybe even matching the Old English A they currently use.
@Briggs- Thanks glad you like the pix!
@Tony D.- That would be me in the pic. I wanted to take the shovel but people were still taking pix with them and by the time I got out of the refreshment tents they were already gone. The Milpitas and Berryessa station will be starting
@Briggs- Thanks glad you like the pix!
@Tony D.- That would be me in the pic. I wanted to take the shovel but people were still taking pix with them and by the time I got out of the refreshment tents they were already gone. The Milpitas and Berryessa station will be starting this year. As far as the Flea Market, none of the speakers said anything about it so I don’t know if it is closing.
@Dan-I want one of those hats!
I have the Fact Sheets that were given to us with a few goodies that I still need to scan. I’ll send ML the link.
@mj824,
Thanks for the info. BTW, who’s the girl with the awesome calves behind Mike Honda’s chair? (LOL! jk 😉 No, my wife doesn’t read this blog.
letsgoas says:
April 13, 2012 at 11:53 AM letsgoas(Quote)
lets hope when the a’s move down to sj and they decide to have an interlocked sj a’s hat that they don’t use that one since it’s basically the sjg’s logo but only in green and gold.
^^^^^^^
They will probably have two different logos for the hats. One with the A’s currently being used or something similar and the other will be probably have an interlocking SJ logo.
I’m sure the colors will still be green and gold as well.