Pick the date Berryessa BART opens, win $100 Clipper card
QDo you have an updated estimated opening date for Berryessa BART?
— SJ Guy
ANo, although BART should be taking over the 10-mile extension for testing next month. But there’s another deadline fast approaching.
The first person to pick the date the line opens gets a Clipper card pass worth $100 from Roadshow. To enter, email your prediction to mrroadshow@ bayareanewsgroup.com before June 1.
QAny idea when BART will tunnel though downtown San Jose?
— Michael Phillips, Fremont
AThe target date is 2026, but I’m betting it will be later. VTA got a $730 million shot in the arm last month from California’s new gas tax. This helps pave the way to a $1.5 billion request for federal funding to be made this summer.
QYou said survey work will begin to raise the bridge decks at the MacArthur Maze. What does this mean? Would they shut down the bridges to raise the deck up a few feet?
— Richard Garlow
ANo. Caltrans will increase the vertical clearances in the Maze to the current standard of 16.5 feet. To do so, the state has to make some modifications to existing structures — raising some, lowering others. Survey work was recently completed.
QDoes the DMV have an alternative to the written test? There must be people with limited literacy ability due to lack of fluency in English, Spanish, Vietnamese or whose first language is Icelandic, Tongan, etc.
— Carl Odegaard
AThe DMV does not administer many written tests these days. They have touch-screen terminals in all offices, replacing the traditional paper exam with an automated knowledge test. The DMV started using the touch-screen terminals in 2014, when the tests were only available in English and Spanish. Now, automated and au- dio tests are available in 32 languages.
The DMV also offers American Sign Language, a person-to-person examination and can provide an interpreter at no cost to the customer.
QI loved your reference to the baseball player Ron Santo recently. He and I attended the same high school in the ’ 50s — Franklin High School in Seattle. He was a star athlete even then, quarterback for our football team, forward on the basketball team, and of course, baseball.
— Judy Cummings, Los Altos Hills
ASanto was my boyhood idol and I would take his baseball card and put it in the spokes of my bicycle to make a cool noise as my buddies and I roared down the steep hills of Dubuque, Iowa. The Santo card did not fare well.