Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...A Santa Clara County civil grand jury report sharply criticized the Valley Transportation Authority’s handling of the nearly $13 billion San Jose BART extension Wednesday, saying the agency has failed to control financial risks, weakened oversight and jeopardized public trust in one of the Bay Area’s most consequential transit projects.
The report lands as VTA prepares its final application for $5.1 billion in federal funding — money the agency is counting on to fund nearly half of the project — and questions mount about whether it can contain costs.
The 6-mile, four-station BART extension, which will run from Berryessa Transit Center in North San Jose, through downtown and to Santa Clara, has been several decades in the making, with repeated delays and cost overruns fueling uncertainty. In 2014, the project was expected to cost $4.7 billion and open in 2026, but the latest estimates now peg the price tag at $12.75 billion with a 2037 opening.
“The VTA Board has failed in its responsibility to provide effective management, oversight and financial control of the BSVII Project,” the report said**, **referring in shorthand to the BART to Silicon Valley project’s second phase.
Campbell City Councilmember Sergio Lopez, who serves as the chair of VTA’s Board of Directors, said they take the findings “seriously” and “remain committed” to improving transparency and accountability.
The grand jury said in the report that the lengthy timeline exposes VTA to financial risks, including the rising cost of labor and materials. The agency has not conducted an updated cost estimate since 2024, though it has been working on cost savings efforts. The $5.1 billion promised by the Federal Transit Administration was less than what VTA had hoped for, triggering a push to close a projected $700 million to $1.2 billion funding gap.
The grand jury said there is “no realistic plan to deal with foreseeable financial risks,” raising concerns about the agency’s reliance on two local sales tax measures and and uncertainty about federal support for the rail project.
Some of the issues are part of a longer, institutional problem, the grand jury said. VTA not following the recommendation of a 2019 civil grand jury report to reform its governance structure has also led to a “weakening” of the board’s oversight of the project.
The previous grand jury called the agency one of the “most expensive and least efficient transit systems in the country.” It criticized its structure, where board members are appointed from local city councils and the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors and serve two-year terms, which leads to frequent turnover. VTA has been resistant to moving to an elected board despite its governance being the subject of a state audit and several other critical reports.
The current grand jury said that during its investigation, “sources repeatedly raised concerns about the level of knowledge and decision-making ability of the full VTA Board.”
Struggling Bay Area transit agencies could further complicate problems. In April, the state issued a $590 million bailout to Caltrain, Muni, AC Transit and BART in hopes of sustaining service ahead of the November election when voters will weigh in on a regional sales tax measure. The state tapped into a pool of money set for capital projects like San Jose’s BART extension, raising concerns for people like state Sen. Dave Cortese who worry it could put the project’s finances at risk.
The grand jury also pointed to weak BART ridership, which has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, as a future financial concern. The first phase of BART’s extension into Silicon Valley, which is made up of the Milpitas and Berryessa stations, has lost an average of $69 million annually during its first five years in operation, according to calculations by the grand jury. In January 2026, ridership was 86% below what was previously projected for the two stations.
Beyond the financial risks, the report also took aim at oversight of the project and said the agency’s board has “failed to hold VTA staff accountable for missing deadlines to provide analysis and information” requested by an oversight committee that was formed in 2023.
The grand jury cited a debate over the tunnel design as one example where staff failed to respond to requests in a timely manner. In March 2024, VTA officials said it would conduct an updated cost analysis and “apples-to-apples” comparison between the chosen single-bore tunneling method and the twin-bore approach. They projected the review would take three months, but a report wasn’t released on the matter until August 2025.
The committee itself has also failed “to provide guidance on issues critical to future strategic direction,” the grand jury said.
Santa Clara Councilmember Suds Jain, who sits on the committee, said agency officials often say that each month of delayed decisions adds $20 million to $30 million to the project’s cost. He feels the figure is often cited “to force us into bad decisions.” In an interview, Jain called the report a “great wake up call.”
“It echoes a lot of things that I’ve been saying about the project and I feel like a lot of the stuff I’ve been saying has fallen on deaf ears,” he said.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who chairs the oversight committee but was absent from recent meetings during his short-lived run for governor, defended the committee in a statement, saying the committee has “pushed VTA staff to develop a proper plan B should federal dollars be delayed (and) identified $600 million in cost savings.”
“The greatest risk to this project is time delay,” he said. “I’ve encouraged the committee and VTA staff and contractors to accelerate actual building rather than endless second guessing that does more for the consultant class than our constituents.”
In a statement posted on its website, VTA said it has already made “significant improvements” to several of the issues citied in the report, and remains “focused on delivering a transformative transit project that will serve Santa Clara County for generations to come.” The agency will have to formally respond to findings within 90 days.