My morning commute usually goes like this: I hop on the BART Green Line from San Francisco’s Mission District for an hour-plus train ride to Berryessa Station in East San Jose. From there, I hold on for dear life — with gratitude — as VTA’s Rapid 500 bus hurtles toward San José Spotlight’s downtown newsroom at full speed.
But since a historic VTA worker strike brought bus and light rail rides to a halt on March 10, my mornings have become scenes of confusion and headache. The Berryessa station’s bus area is now deserted and pin-drop silent. Throngs of fellow commuters are emerging from Berryessa — located an inconvenient 3-plus miles away from most of our destinations downtown — to find we’re stranded.
In the strike’s early stages, I weighed walking miles to work against paying $10 to $15 for an Uber twice a day. Looking around, I saw other commuters make that same calculation, as mostly San Jose State University students walked from stranger to stranger asking to split rides, summoning an accordion of cars on the adjacent road. I’ve watched our commute become a flashpoint over the past 11 days for the consequences of the first work stoppage in VTA history, highlighting the lack of transit connectivity in our car-dominated region, and the slow pace at which other transit agencies have made inroads to serving us.
San Jose State student Neyva Alonzo comes in to Berryessa six days a week from Castro Valley — usually 30 to 40 minutes on BART. She told me she learned about the VTA strike the hard way.
“I literally showed up here waiting for the bus and then found out through my friend,” Alonzo told San José Spotlight. “I wasn’t really planning on having to spend this much money on Uber rides. It has definitely been taking a toll.”
There are plans to extend BART through downtown San Jose to Santa Clara. But for now, the Berryessa station is the southern terminus for the Bay Area’s largest public transit service connecting Santa Clara County to four others.
@sanjosespotlight San José Spotlight reporter Brandon Pho commutes into the city and relies on a VTA bus to get into downtown. That’s been upended with a worker strike that started March 10. Learn more at SanJoseSpotlight.com. #VTAstrike #siliconvalley #bayareatransit #sanjose #BART #bus #publictransit #localnews
Monthly data snapshots show the station logs more than 1,500 daily arrivals, mostly from San Francisco’s financial district, Fremont, Union City and Berkeley. But without VTA, the station has all but isolated people without bikes or friends in town who can drive us the last lap.
“It’s just in the middle of nowhere,” SJSU student Abhi Mahil tells me of the Berryessa location. “It’s not near the city. It’s out of the way. Other BART stations are closer to their respective cities’ cores. It’s not a very useful spot for a BART station, but it is what it is.”
Mahil comes to Berryessa every day from Dublin, about an hour commute similar to mine. He said he first learned of the strike through emails from the university. He’s been ordering Uber rides every day.
“Obviously it’s faster than a bus, but it’s $15 for one trip. Buses for SJSU students are free,” Mahil told San José Spotlight.
VTA is one of many U.S. public transit agencies teetering on the edge of a fiscal cliff, grappling with expiring federal pandemic aid while ridership struggles to rebound to pre-COVID levels.
But VTA has made major strides in recent years. The agency reported a milestone in 2024 of reaching 100% of overall pre-pandemic bus ridership. Transit advocates such as Monica Mallon, who’s also a San José Spotlight columnist, have lauded VTA as having one of the strongest recoveries among large public transit agencies in the U.S.
Mallon is now documenting her adjustment to life without VTA buses on social media.
“I’ve totally witnessed the same thing, where I’ll get off Caltrain and everyone is trying to get e-scooters or trying to call an Uber or Lyft and it can be really hard to get – really competitive,” Mallon told San José Spotlight. “Sometimes I just have to walk all the way home and it’s been a 6-mile walk that I can do in just under two hours.”
Adam Cohen, a senior research associate with the Mineta Transportation Institute, said the transit workers’ strike comes as no surprise over soaring inflation and housing costs compounding the health and safety woes they already face. But he said he’s concerned about the long-term consequences of service disruptions.
“The longer the strike goes, the more likely it is for people to find permanent alternative options and ultimately, if that hurts ridership, it will hurt the agency and labor,” Cohen told San José Spotlight.
I went back to the students with this idea. Alonzo admits Uber is a faster commute. But it hasn’t yet converted her.
“The bus strike is not just affecting students. It’s also affecting our communities. I had an older lady come up to me the other day and ask me to order her an Uber,” she told me.
Her rationale is one of collective good. But the bus can be about more than necessity. It can be about letting the world pull you along, as opposed to you struggling to control it. The strike reminds me that I could withstand the cramming — the clattering of engines and screeching brakes — just to ride the rhythm of the city.
“I still prefer to wait for the bus,” Alonzo told me, and I have to agree.
Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X.
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