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.
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