Abstract Manager

San José is the largest and fastest growing urban centre of Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. As demand at San José Diridon Station has increased in line with population growth, the needs of consumers and society have evolved, and as increased and additional lines (such as California High Speed Rail) are anticipated, the current station has become unable to provide adequate capacity, functionality, or inter-connectivity for passengers. A previously proposed design came with significant funding and deliverability challenges requiring Mott MacDonald to work in close collaboration with Caltrain and its partner agencies — the City of San José, Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, California High Speed Rail, and Metropolitan Transportation Commission — to develop and evaluate a series of updated design alternatives for the redevelopment of Diridon Station.

Our approach was designed to confirm that the five partner agencies —each with different mandates, funding sources, and operational responsibilities—had a seat at the table and a voice in key decisions. The alternatives evaluation criteria were developed through an iterative process involving multiple workshops, meetings, and rounds of review and comment, allowing each partner agency to contribute in shaping the evaluation. Key themes from the community—historic preservation, access, visual impacts, greenhouse gas emissions, cost, and construction disruption—were also directly addressed in the evaluation of alternatives and in the final recommendation. In parallel, we developed three alternatives for evaluation which were then assessed against the evaluation criteria. This enabled the partners to reconsider an unaffordable and delivery challenged megaproject into one that is viable and achieves more positive outcomes for the owner and local community than the original project.

This project was the second business case that Caltrain has undertaken, and the first to be completed. As no formal business case guidance exists for this client or geography, Mott MacDonald used knowledge of international best practice in business cases and evaluation to develop a decision-making framework uniquely tailored to this project.

This project is an example of successfully implementing a business case process as a consensus building tool, providing a strong evidence base and structured process for how to make and inform key decisions. With a focus on affordability and deliverability, we identified a recommended project at less than half the cost of the original concept, while enhancing the project vision and outcomes, and garnering greater stakeholder and community support.