(Carolina Wilson/Peninsula Press) A community plans Five Wounds Community residents, Mary and Bob Van Cleef, sit on the porch of their home of 14 years. We want a 28th Street Alum Rock station in the project.”Īlthough all four stations will now undergo an Environmental Impact Report - keeping the hope of the Alum Rock station alive - East San Jose residents, like Cosby, remain unsure about the future. “I think though, as an agency, we’ve heard from the community. “We’re in a new climate now with the federal government,” said Brent Pearse, VTA’s community outreach supervisor. But community protests prompted them to postpone submission. VTA had planned to turn in its application by the end of the year. So they began considering a proposal to keep only two locations in downtown San Jose. VTA said it considered scaling back its plans for four new stations to two because of a 2012 federal transportation bill that makes it harder to secure funding for such projects.Īfter considering project costs, how profitable the station would be and ridership projections, VTA said a more modest two-station proposal would increase their chances of securing a federal grant.
“I feel almost as if my husband had gone out and had an affair … How could they be so disrespectful?” “It was like a shot in the heart,” resident Joan Rivas-Cosby said. 6, the Five Wounds Community received devastating news after a transportation blogger spotted a VTA meeting agenda online proposing removing the station from a federal funding application that was to cover the bulk of the construction costs. Since then, “Little Portugal,” as it is called, has spent over a decade preparing for the station by constructing an urban village plan residents are banking on to revitalize the area with hundreds of new housing units and thousands of new jobs.īut on Oct. It’s all to celebrate the opening of a new BART station at Alum Rock named after a nearby avenue.įourteen years ago, the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) proposed bringing four BART stations to the San Jose area, including one to the Five Wounds Community, a neighborhood mostly of Portuguese immigrants that has few public transportation options. The Five Wounds Community of East San Jose will gather in the newly built town square. The band will march to tunes of their Portuguese ancestors. East San Jose residents remain unsure whether the proposed Alum Rock BART station will become a reality or not.įeathered, pith helmets will pulsate with the beating of Portuguese drums.