Today’s San Francisco Chronicle carried an item discussing the exciting plans for a new transit hub in the city.
Ideas for new Transbay Terminal
Edward Epstein, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, February 16, 2001
“It is unusual. It shows that if we break down jurisdictional barriers for the region, we can get it done,” said San Mateo County Supervisor Mike Nevin, vice chairman of the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board. That agency, which operates the increasingly busy Caltrain commuter service, would be a member of the powerful new joint powers authority for the terminal.
Behind all the bureaucratic jargon is a recognition by politicians and transit planners in San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda and Contra Costa counties that the old, beat up and underused Transbay Terminal at First and Mission streets has to be torn down and transformed into a 21st century home for all kinds of transit.
Such a “multimodal” role is nothing new for the terminal. It opened in 1937 as the San Francisco terminal for the Key System trains that carried passengers from the East Bay across the new Bay Bridge. At the terminal, buses and streetcars awaited the passengers.
But the Key route died in 1958, and since then, the Transbay Terminal has been in slow decline.
Planners say they realize that without agreement from several counties, the terminal project, already years in the making, could get bogged down in the turf-defending warfare that has dogged other transit projects like extending BART to San Jose or to San Francisco International Airport.
With a multicounty joint powers arrangement, backers can present a united front at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which decides which projects receive money.
The agreement for the new Transbay Terminal includes the backing of a now- converted San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. In his first term, he called for tearing down the vast terminal and its approach ramps and replacing it with a far smaller facility nearby. The idea was attacked by just about every other elected official in the Bay Area, and the mayor eventually dropped it.
San Francisco voters also weighed in, passing a ballot measure calling for planners to extend and electrify Caltrain service from its current Fourth Street station to the terminal in the heart of the city’s downtown.
Under the new plan, the terminal’s current tenants — the Municipal Railway,
Samtrans, Golden Gate Transit, AC Transit and Greyhound — would stay. But the five-level terminal would also be home to a station for the envisioned underground extension of Caltrain from Fourth and Townsend streets, eventual high-speed rail service from Los Angeles and the Central Valley and perhaps new commuter rail service to the East Bay, in a new tube on the bottom of the bay.
There would also be room for mid-day bus storage and perhaps a child care center for commuters’ kids.
The terminal land and its approaches, now owned by the state, would also include 3,000 housing units, a 1,000-room hotel, up to 2 million square feet of office space and 325,000 square feet for retail use. Planners hope to start demolishing the current terminal, and opening a temporary one, in 2003, with completion of the new station set for 2007.
One reason for private development at the new terminal, and a prime reason for the new joint powers agency, is raising money to pay for a project whose price tag is now put at $900 million.
“I’m sure there will have to be several sources of funding,” said Matt Williams, chairman of the AC Transit board.
A new report estimates developers could kick in $400 million toward the cost. Another source might be $84 million in Bay Area toll bridge revenues already set aside for the terminal. Bonds could also be sold by the new authority.
Williams’ board yesterday approved the idea of creating the joint powers agency with San Francisco and Caltrain. San Francisco supervisors have already approved it unanimously, and the Caltrain board is expected to follow suit in early March.
The California Department of Transportation has already spent about $11.5 million on seismic strengthening of the terminal to keep it going until decisions are made about its future. That project involved evicting most of the terminal’s retail tenants, so today the vast building has an empty feeling.
Maria Ayerdi, Brown’s project manager for the terminal, has been busy in Sacramento, lobbying the Legislature for support. “We’re just telling them what we’re doing, and hoping they’ll be helpful in the future,” she said.