A couple of hundred officials, workers, and looky-loos braved the wind and cold rains and jammed the platforms of BART's new Warm Springs/South Fremont station for this morning's opening ceremony. Regular service begins tomorrow.
"It is an engineering marvel," said BART director Thomas Blalock, who represents the area, during a speech. He also boasted about the station's eco-friendly features, such as solar panels. "And you can see bike lanes throughout the system," he said.
As seen in the photos below, there are indeed kermit-striped bike lanes and electronic bike lockers, which Streetsblog tried out--they work! That said, it's unclear where anyone would bike to or from the station, since there's not much in sight except open, empty land. The SF Chronicle broke down what's currently around the station, such as the Tesla plant, about two miles away. And Streetsblog wrote a bit about the details of the new extension in a post after BART announced the opening date. But to review, this is BART's 46th station, and it took 5.4 miles of new track to get there from Fremont station.
More stuff is coming. "On the west side of the station there are 4,000 housing units planned," said Nick Josefowitz, BART director and Streetsblog contributor. Indeed, Streetsblog could see the bulldozers were already at work preparing the land. "We should make all our stations with...EV-charging stations, solar panels," said Josefowitz, standing near the dramatic rotunda at the entrance. "The station should be a testament to what the public can build when we are ambitious about public spaces."
"The public is happy to see the investment," said BART General Manager Grace Crunican, in a conversation with Streetsblog. "And we're grateful to our partners in building this."
That said, many officials were concerned about the disposition of the rest of the project, which is to extend BART to San Jose, given the current politics in Washington. For now though, the Silicon Valley Berryessa Extension project is still on track, with two new stations expected to open in 2017.
Did you attend the opening? Will you ride the extension this weekend? Leave your impressions below. First, some more photos.
