Local 21 Members Bring BART to the South Bay

BART in South Bay Area is becoming a reality. Within weeks of opening the Warm Springs Station in Fremont, BART offered a tour to Valley Transportation Authority union staff and member leaders.  VTA is partnering with BART on South Bay public transit projects. The group of about 20 viewed the new BART station in Milpitas and construction sites.


Many of our Local 21 Transportation Authority Engineers and Architects chapter members have worked on, or are working on, bringing BART to San Jose, including TAEA President Raj Sehdev and Vice President Jagdish Dadhania. They joined Local 21 Lead Representative Stanley Young, representatives from VTA’s three other unions and the VTA General Manager on the trip.


The tour started with an overall briefing and timeline of the project thus far. Then the group departed for the Milpitas station, which was awe inspiring. The station will link the VTA light rail to BART and have buses that will depart from that station. The second location the group toured was the Berryessa section of northeast San Jose. 


Our very own Santa Clara Valley Water District members worked on flood protection so BART goes high above ground at this site. There were also sustainable measures that took place in protecting steelhead salmon in the Berryessa creek. It was inpsiring to see how our South Bay chapter members were involved in the totality of this project, including those at Santa Clara County and the City of San Jose. 


BART will eventually travel through downtown San Jose and link with Mineta San Jose International Airport. To read more about the project, visit http://www.vta.org/bart/.