VTA’s BART Silicon Valley (BSV) Phase II Project is a 6-mile project that extends BART service from the Berryessa BART station, which opened for passenger service in June 2020, to downtown San José and the City of Santa Clara. The Phase II Project includes four stations, and the 28th Street / Little Portugal station will be the next BART station to the south. Please visit the BSV Phase II Project website for more information about the overall BSV Phase II Project.
Over the next few weeks, VTA will feature each of the BSV Phase II Project stations by posting a blog with an accompanying fly-through video for each station, starting with the 28th Street / Little Portugal station.
The 28th Street/Little Portugal station area is at the center of San José’s Portuguese community and many other multicultural communities. The area’s strong Latinx and Portuguese identities have made it a destination for Latinx and Portuguese food, arts, heritage, and culture. The concentration of ethnically diverse businesses – along with cultural institutions such as the Five Wounds Portuguese National Parish and Mexican Heritage Plaza – draw visitors from across the city and region. VTA’s 28th Street/Little Portugal BART Station was designed with the community to reflect the multicultural communities and heritages of the station area.
The station incorporates traditional Portuguese design treatments, including a red and white terracotta exterior that complements the nearby Five Wounds Portuguese National Parish. The interior of the station includes terrazzo flooring that incorporates blue tiling elements reminiscent of Portuguese azulejo tiling and calçada pavement.
In addition to being designed to complement its cultural contexts, the 28th Street/Little Portugal station is designed to complement its physical contexts, as are all of the stations that are part of VTA’s BSV Phase II Project: The stations are designed to bring in daylight and to be integrated with their surrounding environments, including by locating station entrances and exits in ways that provide direct sightlines and direct access to and from nearby places and transportation facilities. Additional information about the 28th Street/Little Portugal BART Station, especially about the details of its design, can be found on its station page on the BSV Phase II Project website.
The 28th Street/Little Portugal Station is expected to accommodate around 7,000 daily riders in 2040 who will be able to walk and roll between the station and many nearby homes, businesses, cultural centers, and transit services – including the many VTA bus routes that run along Julian and Santa Clara streets.
The BSV Phase II Project team developed the current station concepts and accompanying access improvements to be consistent with applicable standards and requirements and to inform contractor proposals. Many of the concepts were developed in partnership with the City of San José and the community, including the station aesthetic and access and circulation concepts. Like all of the BSV Phase II stations, the community has been engaged to discuss development of the 28th Street/Little Portugal BART station for years, including via quarterly Community Working Groups (CWGs), other public meetings, and the station aesthetics effort that was conducted in 2021.
In addition to the stations themselves, facilities for people who walk, roll, and take transit are slated to be installed by the BSV Phase II Project. For the 28th Street/Little Portugal Station, these facilities include a plaza between the station entrance/exit building and 28th Street, new pick-up/drop-off facilities, a temporary shared-use path along 28th Street, sidewalks, raised and high visibility crosswalks, signals with features focused on serving people who walk, and 250 unsecured and secured bike parking spaces – including a bike station. The BSV Project is also slated to install 1200 parking spaces via a structure and a surface lot that are being designed to be converted and absorbed into transit-oriented development (TOD).
More community engagement will be conducted to further refine the station designs and their multimodal access improvements after the contractors are on board. The stations have also been designed to achieve Envision Platinum and VTA’s sustainability goals.
VTA will also work with the City and surrounding communities to create a Design Development Framework (DDF) to shape future TOD on VTA properties surrounding the 28th Street/Little Portugal Station. The DDF will be developed concurrently with an update of the City of San José’s Five Wounds Urban Village Plan. This work is expected to kickoff later this year as a collaborative effort between VTA, the City of San José, community members, and other stakeholders. The DDF is intended to guide development of VTA’s properties near the station and catalyze more sustainable development in the station area in context sensitive ways that are consistent with the updated Five Wounds Urban Village Plan, which will address pressing community concerns around displacement, the need for affordable housing, and small and local business opportunities. The Five Wounds Urban Village Plan will address development throughout the larger station area and identify guidelines for the design of the area, including for open spaces, buildings, and access and circulation elements.
The Five Wounds Urban Village Plan update and the DDF will both be informed by VTA’s 28th Street/Little Portugal Transit Oriented Community (TOC) Playbook, which was developed in partnership with the community and was mutually accepted by VTA and the City of San José. The TOC Playbook identifies opportunities for long-standing community priorities such as community plazas and the Five Wounds Trail. The TOC Playbook also includes strategies to protect and support small businesses, protect and produce workforce and affordable housing, and assist in strengthening community identity.
Source: VTA’s Transit Oriented Community (TOC) Study (2020)
The 28th Street/Little Portugal BART station and its accompanying efforts will strengthen the local community and create stronger ties between it and the region.
Please visit the BSVII Project webpage for more information about the overall project, including information about the Project’s benefits, how the stations have been designed, timelines for project delivery, and how the community has been and will be engaged to plan, design, and deliver this transformational project that will ring the bay with fast and frequent passenger rail service.