Commuters to and from South Fremont will finally get their own BART station this weekend after what feels like a decade of delays. Warm Springs / South Fremont Station will no longer be a hypothetical on BART maps starting Saturday morning, with the Fremont line now getting one stop longer, and bringing BART service one step closer to San Jose.

BART just announced an opening ceremony Friday to which the public is welcome, from 10 a.m. to noon — but you won't be able to take the train there. Shuttles will be provided from Fremont Station to and from the event.

The new station extends the reach of BART five miles to the south, and includes 2,082 new parking spaces at the station. As the Business Times notes, "The station is built in an area that was mostly open fields," and Fremont city planners are expecting about 12,000 people to move into the area over time in as-yet constructed, transit-adjacent housing units.

The $890 million station and track extension project broke ground a full eight years ago, in 2009, and was originally expected to be open in 2014. That got pushed back a year, and then another year, and then BART wanted to have it open last fall ahead of the big $3.5 billion bond vote, but then BART's ancient computer systems scuttled that plan, bringing us to this week and the grand opening date of March 25, 2017.

Also, as BART discusses, the city of Fremont is excited for more tenants to arrive in the Warm Springs South Fremont Innovation District, which is already home to Tesla. "BART and Warm Springs Station are the linchpin of the whole plan and it’s probably worth mentioning that the city has invested years of planning in this area to make the most of the opportunity," says Fremont Economic Development Director Kelly Kline. "We won’t get another one of these and so we really want to make the most of it.”

Previously: BART's Ancient Computer Systems Are Holding Up Opening Of New Warm Springs/South Fremont Station