Muni moving service to new terminal
A 5-Fulton bus makes a run through the groundlevel bus plaza of the new Transbay Transit Center. Muni will officially begin using the new station for some lines Saturday, and an official grand opening is set for August.
The Transbay Transit Center’s official grand opening may not occur until August, if things stay on schedule, but Muni is making the move to the big new bus station on Saturday.
The 5-Fulton, 5-Fulton Rapid, 7-Haight/Noriega, 38-Geary and 38-Geary Rapid bus lines — all but two of the lines that begin and end in that neighborhood — will start using the bus plaza on the ground level of the terminal.
Passengers will get on and off buses between Natoma and Minna streets near the Fremont Street side of the plaza. Muni ambassadors and directional signs will help guide passengers to the boarding areas.
Only two buses that have been serving the temporary Transbay Terminal will not make the move yet. The 25Treasure Island line will stay at the temporary terminal until it moves to the new terminal’s elevated bus deck in August, and the 6-Haight/Parnassus will remain until more room is available at the bus plaza, which is still surrounded by construction.
Muni spokesman Paul Rose said Muni is moving most of its bus lines now because the plaza is ready and provides better accommodations.
“The plan was always to open up the facility as it became available,” he said. “We believe it will be a more conve-
nient location, and this will allow a smoother transition for Muni riders.”
The buses are not the first to serve the transit center, however. Muni began running some of its 5-Fulton buses from the ground-level plaza on Dec. 26 to meet a federal funding requirement that called for service to start by the end of 2017.
Until Saturday, most Muni buses have ended or begun their runs on either Beale or Main streets on either side of the Temporary Transbay Terminal, which has been in use since 2010, when the old, gray, drafty Transbay Terminal was demolished.
Construction of the $2.3 billion transit center — with a 5.4-acre park on the roof and an empty space for a train station in the basement — started the same year, and was on schedule for an October
2017 opening until last spring when delays installing nearly 50 miles of electrical cable pushed the opening back, to June originally and, as of Thursday, sometime in August.
Christine Falvey, a spokeswoman for the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which is overseeing construction, said the contractor still needs to complete some work and the center needs to get permits before other bus agencies, tenants and the public can start using the three-blocklong transit center.
But the authority’s board was confident enough Thursday, she said, to say it would hold a grand opening in August
instead of the earlier, and vaguer, prediction of a late summer date.
AC Transit officials, who had expected to be able to move into the station June 1, are getting antsy. The East Bay bus operator will be the center’s major tenant, running hundreds of buses on 27 transbay lines in and out of the bus deck on the third floor.
Like the original Transbay Terminal, the new center will feature an elevated bus loop with a direct link to the Interstate 80 skyway and the Bay Bridge — something that’s expected to shave several minutes from cross-bay bus rides.
But before it can start serving the transit center, AC needs to train its drivers to navigate the new approaches, which include a cable-stayed suspension bridge across Howard Street, and the bus bays and traffic signals on the bus deck as well as a nearby bus storage area.
“We think it is a great terminal that’s going to provide phenomenal service to our passengers,” said Robert Lyles, an AC Transit spokesman. “But we can’t get to providing that service until we have access to the building for training.”