High Cost Rail - Part 138 Transbay White Elephant

You might think the Transbay Transit Center in downtown SF is a long way from B'game and its problems are not our problems, but think again.  The Chronicle's front page piece peels this smelly onion nicely

But the suave architecture masks formidable problems. The budget for the huge complex has climbed from $1.6 billion to $2.259 billion. The situation became so dire that San Francisco stepped in last year to bail out the project, which is being built by the regional Transbay Joint Powers Authority.  The subterranean shell is designed to hold the concourse and platform for commuter trains from the Peninsula and high-speed rail service from Los Angeles. The problem is, it won’t be completed until train tracks that now stop in Mission Bay are extended more than a mile north. And there’s no certainty that all-important second phase will ever come to pass.

By the end of 2015, the budget estimate for the first phase had ballooned to $2.1 billion. Nearly all contingency funds were depleted, and all money earmarked for the second phase was used up as well.  The most optimistic scenario has trains arriving underground in 2027, and $4 billion is the rough estimate solely for the rail extension from Mission Bay, for a total of more than $6 billion.

And here is the real clueless part

As for the $500 million or so in overruns between 2012 and 2015, most of that will be covered by the money that had been earmarked for the rail extension. Taxpayers won’t be asked to cover the extra costs.

So while the MTC pushes a $3 bridge toll increase that continues with automatic COLA increases and revisits the approved underground train route (thereby adding more time and cost), we learn that

Yet even in the worst-case scenario, where the rail extension remains stalled, the transit center’s impact on central San Francisco already has been profound.  You see it in the office and residential towers that have sprouted on nearby blocks. In the workers that crowd the sidewalks at lunch and fill the atmospheric bars after 5 p.m.  Four of those towers, two built and two planned, include bridges to the rooftop space.

So we end up with a really nice $4 billion stretch of rooftop restaurants and bars for downtown office workers.  At least there will be 60 species of trees on the rooftop to sit under and ponder your tax returns.  In the meantime, meaning most of the rest of our lives, plan on getting off Caltrain at Fourth and Townsend.  If one building and a mile of track balloons past the cost estimates, guess how much High Cost Rail will eventually suck up.

Comments

[[email protected]]

This is a perfect example of the leaders elected by the people do not care what we want.
Their care is Power, and GREAT Health Benefits.

[Joe]

Here is a taxation overview for "transportation" from the DJ:

Local legislators have succeeded in channeling various bills through Sacramento and onto Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk. The proposed laws are aimed at increasing sales taxes and hiking the cost of crossing bridges in an effort to raise revenue for transportation projects.

http://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/laws-providing-county-ways-to-seek-transit-tax/article_e4d36146-9c1a-11e7-802d-4fb173550fda.html

[pat giorni]

"So we end up with a really nice $4 billion stretch of rooftop restaurants and bars for downtown office workers"...

Aka the World's most expensive bus depot.

[pat giorni]

The Politician Behind California High Speed Rail Now Says It's 'Almost a Crime'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBrWRapGHAg

[Steve Kassel]

An article which just ran an hour ago in the L.A. Times says that the Central Valley portion of the Bullsh$t Train will run another $1,700,000,000 over budget.

[pat giorni]

What a surprise...please post the link to the story. Thanks.

[Joe]

It's posted as part of the Political Malpractice post. $1.7B is the overrun so far. The total overrun on 119 miles is already expected to be twice that amount.

[Joe]

$100 Billion and growing for high-speed rail, but Sacramento hasn't done a thing about fire prevention or protection for decades. How many SF-LA car trips will have to be replaced 30 years from now to make up for this?
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The Wine Country wildfires have created the dirtiest air ever seen in the Bay Area, regulators said Tuesday, as they intensified health warnings about the smoke.

“We are reporting the worst air quality ever recorded for smoke in many parts of the Bay Area,” said Tom Flannigan, spokesman for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. “This is similar to what you see in Beijing China in bad air days there.”

Soot readings in many areas have reached levels considered very unhealthy or hazardous, air quality regulators said.
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Great job, Governor Brown. Love the priorities. Love that those five new reservoirs, too. What? I imagined that?

[Bruce Dickinson]

The California DMV is paving the way for completely driverless cars to begin testing in June 2018 and in the coming years, the technology will likely be available to consumers. This HSR boondoggle is going to be rendered completely obsolete by the time it gets within 100 miles of any densely populated areas and will have wasted billions of dollars.

Talk about a train-less train-wreck!

[Joe]

From the SF Chronicle:

Salesforce Transit Center puzzle: When will the trains get to the station?

by Rachel Swan 8-09-2018

Beneath the art-bedecked terrazzo floor of San Francisco’s Salesforce Transit Center is an enormous concrete box waiting to be filled.

It’s an end point for bullet trains that may someday zip in from Los Angeles, and commuter Caltrain locomotives chugging up the Peninsula to the South of Market district.

But when the center opens Sunday, that concourse will remain empty. It will likely stay that way for years.

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.

That’s caused some politicians and transit enthusiasts to worry, even as they remain adamant that the rail extension will happen. Because it must happen, said state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Salesforce-Transit-Center-puzzle-When-will-the-13142498.php

[Joe]

Whooops!

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco officials shut down the city’s celebrated new $2.2 billion transit terminal Tuesday after discovering a crack in a support beam under the center’s public roof garden.

Coined the “Grand Central of the West,” the Salesforce Transit Center opened in August near the heart of downtown after nearly a decade of construction. It was expected to accommodate 100,000 passengers each weekday, and up to 45 million people a year.

The center is operated by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority and its executive director Mark Zabaneh said workers discovered the crack around 10 a.m. while replacing roofing tiles. Zabaneh said engineers spent the day inspecting the damage and decided to shut the station around 5 p.m., just as the afternoon rush hour started.

“The beam is cracked,” Zabaneh said. “The behavior of the beam is unpredictable.”

Zabaneh said the crack was found near a weld on a stress-bearing horizontal beam. He said he did not know how long the crack was, but he told reporters that American steel was used in the center’s construction.

Zabaneh said the cause and the extent of the damage were unknown and the decision to close the terminal was made out of an “abundance of caution.”

[Bruce Dickinson]

Joe, Bruce Dickinson would suggest opening a separate thread on this. You are right, this SNAFU is so revealing of the fundamental flaws that have been elucidated on the BV for so many years.

I'll be happy to give my commentary on this - you won't be disappointed!

[Joe]

When things start going wrong, what do you do? Change the project's name, of course:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Completing-Phase-2-of-Transbay-Transit-Center-14882632.php

The spiffy new Transbay transit center will have to add Caltrain and high-speed-rail service to become more than a $2.2 billion bus terminal, but transportation officials believe new leadership is needed — along with a sexy new name and image — to win funding and complete construction of the San Francisco transit hub’s second phase.

A collection of agencies is scrambling to put together an agreement that will help reboot what’s now referred to as the Caltrain downtown extension, or DTX for short. They’re hoping to complete the process and start the rebranding process early next year, if not sooner.

“Maybe that’s an opportunity to get some excitement going and get some ideas,” Boris Lipkin, the Northern California director for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, said of the idea to rename the project.

“Hopefully, we don’t get too many Tunnel McTunnel Face suggestions,” he added, referring to a popular meme.

The last cost estimate for the extension — issued in 2016 — was $4 billion, but most officials think the current cost could be closer to $6 billion. Mark Zabaneh, executive director of the joint powers authority, said the project has about $2.5 billion in the bank.

“It’s a beautiful facility, but it’s not really complete until a train shows up,” said Randy Rentschler, legislative director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s transportation financing and planning agency.
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Good one, Randy.