Silicon Valley transportation leaders are closer than ever to turning San Jose’s gateway into one of the West Coast’s largest mass transit hubs. They just need to come up with billions to pay for it and get residents to embrace the ongoing effects of big construction for decades to come.
The San Jose City Council, at a workshop Friday, focused on two potential designs for the Diridon Station redevelopment and aims to make key progress on its design and financing plans. between now and spring of next year. But some council members balanced their enthusiasm with looming concerns about how the project will encroach on surrounding neighborhoods and whether the city would have to take over private property rights through the eminent domain program to bring the transit project online.
“If we move forward with the elevated (design concept), we’re going to then condemn some of those properties along the project (in the Gardner neighborhood),” Councilman Omar Torres said at the meeting.
City transportation officials said nothing will happen without public input.
“We’re a long way from anything resembling eminent domain, but we want to be very clear about what the potential effect is,” Deputy Transportation Director Jessica Zenk said at the meeting. “We’ll do everything we can to lessen the physical conflict, but some of that will be a trade-off that we’ll have to discuss, including community input.”
But funding for the potential $10 billion redesign price tag is not guaranteed, and officials will have to find multiple funding sources to get federal officials to help match the project. It was already difficult to come by the $5.1 million in federal dollars for the Silicon Valley BART extension, which is estimated to cost $12.7 billion.
“These are critical discussions and I think it’s important for us to stay the course and not let short-term economic issues stop us from making Diridon the hub it can be,” Monica Mallon, a public transit advocate and San Jose Spotlight columnist, told San José Spotlight.
A rendering of the “at-grade” conceptual design for the Diridon Station redevelopment, which creates a lower ground-level floor. Illustration by Mott MacDonald.
It’s another chapter in the region’s transit debate: weighing today’s costs to taxpayers against tomorrow’s promise of a vastly expanded, European-influenced downtown that expects to see as many as 100,000 people moving through downtown Diridon a day.
“We’re 5 percent done and that’s a big step for us,” Councilman Dev Davis said at Friday’s meeting. “It’s taken five to six years to get to this point.”
With the planned BART extension coming into Diridon from the east — and the state’s ongoing high-speed rail project coming from the Central Valley — officials expect 458 trains to enter and exit the renovated station every day by 2040. That also includes enhanced Caltrain service.
One potential design for the station, which would cost between $3 million and $6 million, would keep the tracks at the current street level while excavating the earth beneath the historic brick train station to place it on a deeper, cobbled ground level. The most expensive option — which would cost between $5 million and $10 million — would raise the train tracks above street level and maintain the position of the historic depot.
Under both concepts, passengers would walk along the concourse beneath the tracks and would have to descend to a lower level to access the VTA commuter light rail. Along the way, they would pass a series of shops and restaurants with dining spaces — an attempt by planners to make the station a destination, not just a stopover.
San Jose’s Diridon Station will receive a major renovation to support a large influx of commuters and trains by 2040. File photo.
People could access the concourse through different entry points from White Street, Santa Clara Street, or Cahill Plaza. The main entrance would be through the historic building, and a large public plaza would surround the station, which would also incorporate more glass roofs to make it less dark than it is now.
Both concepts for the location of the train tracks, whether elevated or at street level, would have significant impacts on the surrounding community, forcing officials to figure out how to move roads under or over the new tracks, known as “grade separation.”
City officials recommend creating a construction authority to oversee the project and disbanding it once work is complete. They also recommend some sort of way to cultivate local funding to earn federal matching funds. The city could hope for the project to receive between 20% and 80% of the funding from a federal source. But the larger the project, the less the federal government typically contributes, Zenk said.
The city is seeking to create an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District, similar to the state’s now-disbanded redevelopment agencies, that would take a portion of tax revenue from an area within a set boundary and redirect it to the agency overseeing the project. Creating one could require a series of public hearings and require majority support from affected property owners.
“This has to be a community-led process,” Torres said.
Officials hope to refine the two different design concepts (and develop costs for both) with public feedback over the next six to nine months. Officials will then return to the city and other agencies such as Caltrain and VTA with recommendations for one of the designs.
The city will then begin the environmental clearance process, which will be a combined state and federal environmental impact document. Officials aim to complete that (and determine the project’s governing authority and funding framework) by spring 2025.
“This station is going to become the most important transit hub in the South Bay and possibly Northern California,” Mayor Matt Mahan said at the meeting. “I think we need a station that can really provide a seamless experience.”
Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X, formerly known as Twitter.
