No ETA yet for transit center’s reopening
Exactly when the broken Transbay Transit Center reopens to commuters, park visitors and shoppers hinges on a painstaking examination of paperwork and possible inspections of the building for damage, officials said Thursday.
While Transbay officials have said repairs of the two cracked girders that have kept the center closed for five months should be completed by the first week in June, they stressed that the reopening could be delayed if further inspections are required.
Inspectors have reviewed about 60 percent of the more than 15,000 documents related to the building’s design and construction, said Ron Alameida, Transbay project manager, and should be finished by the end of the month. But a reopening date for the center won’t be known until the review is done.
“That’s the big variable out there,” Alameida told the Transbay Joint Powers Authority board in a presentation Thursday. “By March
1, we should know where we’re at, whether we need more on-site inspections or possible repairs.”
Alameida did hold out a glimmer of hope. So far, he said, inspectors have uncovered nothing that requires further inspection or repair. And if they don’t find anything, he said, it’s possible that parts of the center — including its popular 5.4-acre rooftop park — could open before June. It has been closed since September.
The $2.2 billion transit hub, rooftop park and retail center was open just six weeks when workers discovered cracks in two critical girders that support the building where it crosses Fremont Street. A similar pair of girders over First Street were undamaged, but huge, vertical steel pipes were installed to support the center in both locations.
Since then, engineers have struggled to discover the cause of the fractures and devise and complete repairs. Those repairs, which involve sandwiching each of the girders with thick steel plates joined with 224 steel bolts, are under way. The steel is being fabricated, said Dennis Turchon, Transbay construction manager, and is expected to arrive in March.
Meanwhile, the document review is focusing on 50 types of steel connections that occur multiple times throughout the building. These include locations where 2-inch-thick steel plates are in place, where certain types of welding was used or certain types of cuts have been made in the steel.
While their findings are preliminary, engineers have decided that the cause of the fractured beams involved “a perfect storm.” The factors leading to the failure involved the steel, its fabrication and design, which caused cracking in an area where a welding access hole had been cut, said Michael Engelhardt, a University of Texas structural engineering professor who is head of an independent oversight committee reviewing the investigations and repairs.
Engelhardt said the panel will not determine who’s at fault — that will be determined by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority and, likely, litigation.
“Our focus is not to determine who’s to blame,” he said. “It’s to determine how to prevent this from happening again in the future.”
The oversight panel is looking solely at the cracked girders and other places where steel could crack, Engelhardt said. But Mark Zabaneh, executive director of the Transbay agency, said other engineers and consultants have examined thousands of concrete samples, inspection records, and designs and drawings.
“We are looking at the entire structure,” he said. “We want to make sure that when the center reopens, we can assure people that it is safe and sound.”