Font ResizeBART is still on track to have its Antioch extension up and running by 2015, but the new station won't be where city officials and transportation advocates had hoped.
Joel Keller, a member of BART's board of directors, confirmed that BART can afford to build a station at Hillcrest Avenue in Antioch but cannot pay to bump it 700 feet down the line — the city's preferred location, which had been dubbed the "eastern alternative."
The 10-mile eBART extension from Pittsburg is estimated to cost $462 million; building the Hillcrest station 700 feet farther east would cost upward of an additional $50 million. That locale would have been a better fit for a future transit village, advocates have said. BART officials say a transit village will still work at their chosen location.
"There's just a reality out there that money is not as available as people once thought it was," Keller said. "We're just in a different environment than we were when we started all this."
Antioch officials said they're disappointed by the eastern alternative's demise but admitted they don't have the leverage to press for it — nor the money to fund it.
"It's clearly BART's decision to make," Antioch City Manager Jim Jakel said.
This disappointment is just the most recent for Antioch in rapid transit. Many residents wanted to see traditional BART in eastern Contra Costa and were upset by eBART's light rail model, which will include
"I'm hopeful that this is the last piece of bad news we'll be delivered because I don't politically know how much more bad news we could take at this point on that project," said Councilman Brian Kalinowski, who represents Antioch on transportation issues.
While Keller said construction of the eBART extension is on schedule to coincide with widening of Highway 4, he added that BART may have to borrow money to keep it on track. Keller estimated the cost of borrowing at $15 million over the life of the project.
He said that cost may absorb the money BART will save when bids come in under projections because of the weak economy.
Keller said the hiccups for eBART are similar to problems he saw during construction of the San Francisco International Airport extension and the Pittsburg-Bay Point extension.
The bid for eBART's first phase, a transfer station in Pittsburg, will be awarded later this month, Keller said.
Mayor Jim Davis said he wants to have an eBART workshop at the Feb. 23 City Council meeting to update residents on the project's status.
Reach Hilary Costa at 925-779-7166. Follow her at Twitter.com/hilaryccosta.
