No completion date yet for S.F. subway
Muni’s longawaited $1.6 billion Central Subway project has a new manager just six months before the oftdelayed project is scheduled to be completed — and there’s a chance the grand opening could get pushed back again.
Nadeem Tahir took over as project manager last week after previous stints with the D.C. Metro subway, Honolulu Rail Transit and the Federal Transit Administration. On a media tour Thursday, while more than 100 workers were laying down sections of track and building elevators, San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency officials introduced Tahir and showed off the stillunderconstruction Union Square Station, an echoing concrete concourse filled with halffinished elevators and escalators.
The completion of the Central Subway, which broke ground in 2010 and will reroute Muni’s TThird light rail line from the Bayview up to Chinatown, has been plagued with delays due to problems with general contractor Tutor Perini and existing infrastructure issues.
Officials stopped short of saying the transportation project is behind schedule, but Tahir and acting Muni director Tom Maguire said it would take another six weeks to pinpoint the subway’s completion date.
“Any date that I throw out I don’t think we’ll have thoroughly researched,” Maguire said Thursday
When the project began, Muni officials said passengers would be able to board the trains by the end of 2018. The current projection for opening the Central Subway is January 2020. Transit officials will then have to evaluate the safety of the structures, trackway and rail systems.
Maguire said merchants who long have complained about the burden of construction on busi
nesses along the Stockton Street corridor will appreciate the completion of work in the fall.
“They’re going to have a street that’s clean and free of construction,” he said.
Aboveground construction has snarled traffic on Stockton Street between Geary and Ellis for years, with that section of Stockton Street only recently reopening to buses and cars.
It’s unclear whether the Central Subway will stay within its $1.6 billion budget. An independent federal monitor report analyzing the project said officials had spent nearly all of the federal grant money as of the spring.
“Additional contingency will probably need to be allocated to this contract prior to completion,” the report said.
Officials said they took the findings seriously but noted the report is “not the complete picture.” An updated projection on costs and completion date is expected within the next six weeks.
“There are a lot of interconnections between the work that we have to do for operations and as far as the physical construction,” Tahir said.
Thursday’s tour suggested plenty of work remains to be done on the 900footlong station, which was still dark and dusty, with plywood boards on the concrete slab floor and exposed walls lining the tunnel.
The escalators and elevators that will ferry passengers from the surface and concourse levels are still being built, and workers could be seen laying down the track, which will extend the existing train line 1.7 miles. Union Square Station is expected to connect to Powell Street Station via an underground pedestrian walkway.
Former project manager
“Any date that I throw out I don’t think we’ll have thoroughly researched.” Tom Maguire, acting Muni director, on when the subway might open Gwendolyn Wu is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: gwendolyn.wu@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @gwendolynawu
Albert Hoe estimated the station’s tracks, electrical and mechanical systems would be finished by the middle of 2019.
Transit officials said they are resolving complaints from contractor Tutor Perini, which told San Francisco supervisors in 2017 that the project was running over budget and falling even further behind schedule.
Tutor Perini officials requested $112 million in change orders, exceeding the $79 million budget Muni allotted.
“No project gets done without a certain amount of conflict,” Maguire said.
Tahir is the third manager of the project following Hoe, who took over as the Central Subway’s acting project manager after John Funghi left in 2017 to oversee the electrification of Caltrain.