Designing Transit Stations for the 21st Century

The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s (VTA’s) Silicon Valley Rapid Transit Project (BART extension) into the heart of California’s Silicon Valley is now in the 65% design phase and is scheduled to complete construction in 2016. The $4.8 billion (2005 dollars), 16.3-mile project includes five miles of bored tunnels and six stations. This paper will explore the design of the six BART heavy rail transit stations, their ancillary facilities and their intermodal transfer facilities in response to the following project needs: (1) Best practices in land use planning and coordination between new, high ridership transit facilities and new transit adjacent communities; (2) Sustainable design opportunities in new transit facilities; (3) Aesthetic integration between new transit stations and emerging, high density, city centers; (4) State-of-the-art approaches to fire/life safety and security facility designs; (5) Intermodality and campus planning in new stations; (6) Stations as public symbols and centers of community pride; and (7) Technical aspects of adding on to an existing, aging transit system designed in the 1960’s, some 40 years ago.