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Last week, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), local and regional officials marked the recently completed underground subway portion of the BART Warm Springs extension project.

The subway tunnel, which runs longer than the equivalent of 15 football fields and required 70,000 cubic yards of poured reinforced concrete, took three years to complete. It runs under Lake Elizabeth and was designed to preserve the integrity of Central Park in Fremont, Calif., BART officials said in a prepared statement.

The tunnel's completion marks a milestone in the Warm Springs extension project, which calls for adding 5.4 miles of track from the existing Fremont Station south to a new station in the Warm Springs District of Fremont. The project is the first step toward "seamlessly" connecting BART riders to Silicon Valley.

Once in operation, it will take BART trains, traveling an average speed of nearly 70 mph, about 50 seconds to travel the new subway through the tunnel, agency officials estimate.