San Francisco's Transbay Transit Center Open, When Will Trains Arrive?

"Thousands of visitors jammed the new Transbay Transit Center for its grand opening party Saturday," reports Lauren Hernández for The Chronicle. "Lines stretched the length of the Grand Hall as people tried to get into the $2.2 billion multistory transportation hub." [Article includes an 11-slide photo gallery by Paul Chinn of the 3-block transit center with 5.4-acre rooftop park].

Shortly before 6 a.m. on Sunday, the first bus from Oakland entered the third-floor bus deck from a direct ramp from the Bay Bridge," reports The Chronicle's urban design critic, John King. A sponsorship agreement with Salesforce "is why the publicly funded structure’s official name is Salesforce Transit Center," adds King.

Rachel Swan, who covers transportation for The Chronicle, reported on Thursday on the train dimension for the new transit center.

There is no firm timeline or funding source for the long-promised train service. While transportation officials seek to build momentum for this next phase, San Francisco City Hall is touting a new approach that could raise the cost to $6 billion from an already expensive $4 billion.

Hernández wrote that "high-speed rail service between the Central Valley and San Francisco is scheduled to arrive in 2029," but all bets are off due to the uncertainty associated with a lack of funding and a new governor taking office next January.

Caltrain, the commuter line from San Jose and points south, would be expected to arrive at that time assuming a tunnel is built and tracks laid. Electrification construction along the Peninsula is well underway, a necessity for the train to use the new terminal. Accessing the center from the train's current terminal at Fourth and King Street, a distance of one and one-half miles, is the hurdle.

The challenge of picking a route for the trains that would work for decades to come defies easy solutions. And it’s eluded City Hall and the Transbay Joint Powers Authority — the independent government agency in charge of the transit center and rail extension — for years.

Swan describes the current planning, centering on the proposed Pennsylvania Avenue extension which "quickly caught on at City Hall, finding favor with supervisors and other officials who have to agree on the route before the Joint Powers Authority can pursue it."

But the revision leaves out how to finance the project. So far the city has identified only $1 billion in funding from a mix of sources, including sales taxes and bridge toll money from Regional Measure 3 approved by voters in June. Much of the rest would come from federal and state funds that would need approval.

Mark Zabaneh, the authority’s executive director, "aims to have the rail line ready for construction by 2020, meaning all environmental reviews would need to be complete, and the right-of-way acquired to lay the original 1.3 miles of track from Seventh and Townsend streets to Second and Howard streets," adds Swan.

The money will follow, Zabaneh said, and if everything goes smoothly, the rail extension will be complete by 2029.

Still, skeptics and even some supporters worry about the escalating costs. Some note that the increase comes at an uncertain time for federal and state funding: The GOP-led federal government may be reluctant to shower funds on progressive San Francisco, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said, and state officials are fighting to protect the newly enacted gas tax — a key source of revenue for the proposed rail line and other transit projects — from a ballot measure to repeal it this November.

“If we don’t get Caltrain, and eventually high-speed rail, into Transbay Terminal it will go down as the most expensive bus terminal in the history of humankind,” said San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who also who chairs the board’s Transportation Authority

From Planetizen's archives:

• Blog post: S.F.'s Transbay Transit Center: Grand Central Station of the West, or Billion Dollar Bus Station?
  March 6, 2017
  The developers of San Francisco’s Transbay Transit Center say it has the potential to change travel patterns in the region and land use in the neighborhood, as did New York City’s Grand Central Terminal. How realistic is this promise?

• Is This America's Next Great Train Station?
  March 31, 2013
  Remember this past week when we asked where America's next generation of grand transit hubs would be built? It turns out one may be destined for San Francisco.