Safety first
San Francisco’s new US$2bil transit terminal, the so-called ‘Grand Central of the West’, closes over beam crack.
San Francisco: The so-called “Grand Central of the West” has been closed due to safety concerns after workers discovered a crack in a support beam of the US$2bil (RM8.26bil) transit terminal that opened just last month.
Workers discovered the crack early on Tuesday while installing roofing tiles at the Salesforce Transit Center, according to its executive director Mark Zabaneh.
Engineers spent the day inspecting the damage and Zabaneh said they decided to shut the station at around 5pm, just as the afternoon rush hour started.
He said the cause and extent of the damage were unknown and the decision to close the terminal was made out of an “abundance of caution”.
He also said structural engineers worked at the building on Tuesday night to assess whether it was safe for people to return.
Zabaneh said the crack was found near a weld on a stress- bearing horizontal beam.
Engineers were searching for other cracks in other pipes, but were optimistic that the damage was limited to the one pipe.
Buses were rerouted to a temporary transit centre about two blocks away.
A downtown street that runs under the beam was also ordered closed indefinitely, causing traffic chaos at the same time that some streets were closed for a conference sponsored by Salesforce that was expected to draw 170,000 attendees.
“The beam is cracked,” Zabaneh said. “The behaviour of the beam is unpredictable.”
Enveloped in wavy white sheets of metal veil, the five-level centre includes a bus deck, a towering sky-lit central entrance hall and a rooftop park with an outdoor amphitheatre.
Zabaneh said American steel was used in the centre’s construction.