Everything about San Francisco Transbay Terminal totally explained
San Francisco Transbay Terminal, or simply
Transbay Terminal, is a transportation complex in
San Francisco, California,
USA, located roughly in the center of the rectangle bounded north-south by
Mission Street and Howard Street, and east-west by Beale Street and Second Street. Currently, it serves long-distance buses and transbay buses from San Francisco north to
Marin County, east to the
East Bay, and south to
San Mateo County. Its largest tenants, in addition to San Francisco's own
Muni, are
Golden Gate Transit,
AC Transit,
SamTrans, and
Greyhound Bus Lines.
Bridge Railway
The Transbay Terminal was built as the San Francisco terminus for the electric commuter trains of the
Southern Pacific, the
Key System and the
Sacramento Northern railroads which ran on the south side of the lower deck of the
San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The SP and Sacramento Northern trains ceased service across the Bay in 1941. The Key trains ran until April of 1958 after which the tracks were removed from the terminal and replaced with pavement for use primarily by the buses of the publicly-owned successor of the Key System,
AC Transit.
Environmental
On
January 30,
1986, four underground storage fuel tanks were excavated and removed from the 150 First Street site. Each of these tanks had a capacity of 1,000 gallons (3,785 liters).(Earth Metrics, 1989) Eight soil samples were analyzed and showed the existence of total
petroleum hydrocarbons in levels ranging from 20 to 9,000
parts per million. On
February 3,
1986, the excavation was backfilled.
Transbay Terminal Replacement Project
The new terminal
The City and County of San Francisco, the
Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District (AC Transit), and the
Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (
Caltrain) have proposed a plan to replace the current underutilized and outdated building with an entirely new and more functional building at roughly the same location. In addition to maintaining the current bus services, this proposed terminal would also include a tunnel that would extend the Caltrain commuter rail line from its current terminus at Fourth and Townsend Streets to the new Transbay Terminal. If and when this project is completed, Caltrain riders would no longer need to transfer to Muni in order to reach the downtown financial district. Additionally, the heavy rail portion of the terminal would be designed to accommodate the planned
High Speed Rail from
Los Angeles via the Caltrain line.
As of
2005, this project has published its final
Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and is in the process of designing and securing the required funds. The new Transbay Terminal building, Phase I of the project, is currently scheduled to start construction in
2008 and open in
2014. Phase II of the project, the rail extension, is planned to begin in
2012 and open to rail service in
2019.
Recently, the new Transbay Terminal has been tentatively named
Transbay Transit Center.
New skyscrapers that will fund the construction of the new terminal
Along with the new terminal, thirteen towers have been proposed on sites around the new terminal, ranging from 300 feet (91 m) to 1,200 feet (366 m) tall. If built out to fund the construction of the new terminal, San Francisco will have a new tallest building and its skyline will be altered. City officials have decided to consider rezoning the area around the new terminal, and will analyze the potential to raise existing height limits (550 ft. (168 m) max) upward, with the possibility of three towers exceeding 1,000 ft. (305 m) in height. On December 21, 2006,
Renzo Piano proposed a five tower complex of one 600 foot (183 m) tower, two 900 foot (274 m) towers and two 1,200 foot (366 m) towers. Other towers are under construction nearby on
Rincon Hill and at
Millennium Tower (301 Mission Street).
Serious issues exist with regard to conforming emergency post earthquake transportation planning guidelines and placing massive amounts of building materials and glass directly above a major transit hub and its road and rail connections. In a March 21, 2008 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the author, David Perlman speaks of "the danger to lifelines - the roads, rail tracks and bridges that must carry ambulances, fire trucks and fleeing cars after the quake; the airports that are bound to be unusable". The article quotes "Keith Knudsen of the national nonprofit Earthquake Engineering Research Institute" on the special civil engineering needs of the area: " the downtown area south of Market, where well-engineered high-rises are rapidly filling the neighborhoods, would be particularly dangerous in a major quake because the low-lying filled land there's subject to liquefaction.
Those new buildings might well remain standing in the coming Hayward quake, he said, "but if the streets there settle by a couple of feet, those buildings will be isolated."
The competition winner
As of September 20, 2007, the design proposed by
César Pelli was chosen. This decision ends the eight month competition between various design firms around the world. The Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects and Hines design includes an elevated park, some sixty feet above the street, to hide the inner workings of the terminal. A single tower will also rise into the sky, changing the skyline of San Francisco.
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