Could Trump Funding Cuts Doom BART Extension?

As South Bay transit officials work to bring the long-awaited BART extension through downtown San José to life, they’re also scrambling to form a “Plan B” for how to keep the project moving if President Donald Trump derails a massive chunk of pledged federal funding.

While the extension still faces many hurdles and financial uncertainties, it’s currently estimated to cost about $12.7 billion and open in 2037. Under President Joe Biden, the Federal Transit Administration last year promised $5.1 billion to support it, and local officials had secured another roughly $7 billion.

Officials from the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, which is building the six-mile, four-station extension for BART, at the time celebrated the commitment from Washington and said it would be critical to making the project a reality.

But during Trump’s second term, local leaders have grown increasingly concerned about the potential for the federal funding to be cut off or delayed, and have pressed top project officials to put together a backup plan.

“I’ve asked it every month recently, and I’ll continue to ask, what the status of a plan B is,” San José Mayor Matt Mahan, who chairs a VTA subcommittee intended to more closely oversee the project, said at an October meeting.

“We’re in uncharted waters in Washington. If it becomes clear that the [federal funding] may not be in the works for us for many years, what’s our progress on having a more … radical Plan B so that we continue to have a project?”

Responses from top project officials at VTA have so far left a lot to the imagination.

Tom Maguire, the chief megaprojects delivery officer leading the effort, said in October that after hearing from board members about the concerns, he and his team are working on what the agency calls an “adaptive plan” and expect to deliver it to the board next year.

“The adaptive plan will address the specific risk of not knowing when the federal share will be available. We will explore what options best address this risk and report back early next year,” Maguire said in an email to KQED.

But in an interview with KQED in early October, Maguire said it is “hard to see” what the specifics of a Plan B might look like, noting that the primary focus for the agency has been figuring out the logistics of building the 53-foot-diameter tunnel the extension will run through.

The project, earlier this year, began its first heavy construction, with crews building a “launch structure” — essentially a massive, reinforced hole in the ground where a future $76 million tunnel-boring machine can be dropped into the earth to begin digging.

Even with the $5.1 billion commitment from the federal government, combined with county taxes and state funds totaling nearly $7 billion, the six-mile, four-station extension is still over budget by roughly $700 million to $1 billion, officials say.

VTA staff have been working for the last year to slash costs to bring the project in line with the $12.1 billion in what they hope will be the available pot of money, through trims such as axing a maintenance yard and parking garages and simplifying station designs.

Some board members have raised the potential of harsher cuts — especially if federal funding doesn’t materialize soon — including cutting some stations out of the extension altogether.

The VTA must prove that it can build the project within a timeline and cost that Federal Transit Administration overseers approve in order to formally apply for the funding, something Maguire said the agency plans on doing in late 2026 or early 2027.

But if Trump or his Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were to unilaterally pull back the funding commitment before then, it could deal another blow to a project that has already faced significant challenges, including yearslong delays, harsh internal audits and billions of dollars in cost increases.

While the level of concern about Trump’s potential influence is mixed among officials and experts, he has already intruded on other big transit projects, banking on significant federal support.

Trump’s administration earlier this year clawed back $4 billion from California’s in-progress high-speed rail project, denigrating the long-delayed infrastructure work in the process.

And in mid-October, remarks to reporters, Trump said a $16 billion rail project in New York and New Jersey, known as the Gateway project, was “terminated,” in part, analysts said, to politically punish Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has championed it.

Since those initial comments, mixed signals from the administration about its intentions for the Gateway have only sown more concern and consternation, and fueled anxiety in the Bay Area.

“It’s dire,” Santa Clara City Councilmember Suds Jain, a member of the VTA board and oversight subcommittee, told KQED about the president’s potential to complicate the South Bay project.

“The Trump administration has been trying to penalize blue states,” he said. “So it’s not a great situation for this project because of how much power they have and how much control they have.”

Jain said he thinks the VTA’s only viable “Plan B” options would be to lobby California leaders, already struggling with a budget deficit, to help backfill the funding, or to simply “outlast” Trump, by using existing local and state funds to build portions of the project until the president is out of office, and then apply for the federal money.

Stacey Hendler Ross, a VTA spokesperson, told KQED the agency believes the project has strong support, based on reports from the agency’s lobbyists in Washington, D.C.

“It’s not a matter of if [the project] will receive federal funding, but when,” Hendler Ross said in an email.

The Federal Transit Administration, in an emailed statement, said its staff is working with VTA to meet the requirements for the federal funding. “This involves multiple steps completed over several years,” the statement said.

Jacob Wasserman, a research program manager at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, agreed he doesn’t think projects like VTA’s BART extension would be cut off entirely by the federal government. But there could still be trouble caused by any meddling with the funding, he said, and political leadership could play a big role.

“I don’t think they’ll ultimately be totally canceled for lack of federal funding, but it certainly will engender delays, which add cost,” Wasserman said. “I think if the Republican administration, an administration hostile to California, is still in power at the time they apply for their funds, it could be a huge issue.”

All of the uncertainty comes while questions about the feasibility of the project linger. The Trump administration aside, some VTA board members and other critics have raised concerns about the potential for more delays and even higher costs.

“This is going to turn into California’s version of the Boston Big Dig, where you start digging, you run out of money, and you’re going to have major delays, major cost increases,” Barney Smits, a retired engineer who worked for BART for 25 years, said at a public meeting.

The VTA decided in June to ditch its primary contractor on the project, a joint venture called Kiewit Shea Traylor, because of a dispute over the cost of tunneling and trackwork. That decision could add 18 months to the timeline before tunneling begins, which is currently pegged for 2029.

Other transit agency experts brought in to review VTA’s progress suggested the agency consider keeping the original contractor or “major components of that team” to take on a new tunneling contract because of their expertise.

It’s unclear if the agency plans to reconsider its contracting decision.

Jain, in an October meeting, said the project has been marred by “rookie mistakes” and mismanagement, and he has “little confidence” it can be completed for $12.7 billion, let alone $12.1 billion.

Morgan Hill Mayor Mark Turner, a VTA board member, asked Maguire during a joint BART and VTA meeting in October about the prospect of added costs.

“We have years to go on this project. Are we possibly looking at a price tag of $15 to $20 billion? Are you saying we can hold this to $12 billion throughout the rest of the project?” he asked.

“The answer to that is yes, but it’s a qualified yes,” Maguire said. “Yes, if we continue to make decisions, get contracts out there, get contractors locked in at prices that are valid today so that we don’t lose any more time.”