S. F. Muni tunnel fix needs costly redo
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has long struggled to complete vital construction projects and fix equipment failures, but the problems are worse this year amid a pandemic and fiscal crisis, contractor stumbles and past decisions creating present headaches, city leaders and advocates say.
This week, the agency revealed to city supervisors that part of Twin Peaks Tunnel will need to be replaced — just two years after a major $ 50 millionplus renovation of the tunnel was completed.
The backtrack will cost tens of millions of dollars, take three months and slow the restart of the light rail system, which abruptly shut down in August due to equipment failures. The shutdown came two days after the light rail was reopened, but the need to replace broken splices, which connect
overhead wires, will keep it closed into next year. The SFMTA will not bring back subway service before the Twin Peaks Tunnel is completed in February and will phase in aboveground light rail and bus service first, spokeswoman Kristen Holland said.
In addition to the tunnel and light rail fiascos, last week the agency pushed back the opening of the Central Subway project from next year to 2022 because of COVID19-related delays.
Exasperated city supervisors, who also serve as the San Francisco County Transportation Authority board, demanded this week that the agency do better.
“It is just extraordinary that this amazing city seems unable to deliver a transportationrelated capital project,” Supervisor Rafael Mandelman said during a meeting of the board on Tuesday. “We can’t continue like this.”
City leaders, SFMTA staff and transit advocates this week said problems include a policy of taking the lowest instead of the best contract bid, failure to manage contractors well, missing communication between engineering and maintenance departments, weak oversight of the capital projects division and no clear chain of command on interagency projects.
The agency’s director of transit, Julie Kirschbaum, presented a plan for longterm subway investments and improvements Tuesday and told the board the agency needs “significant improvement in project delivery.”
“It’s an area we know we need to do better on,” she said. “We don’t have all the answers now.”
SFMTA Director of Transportation Jeffrey Tumlin, who took over leadership last year, said he inherited some problems and is now responsible for all of them, including what he called a “culture of fear.”
“This is something I’m working very hard to correct,” Tumlin said. “Employees are afraid to diagnose the problem and elevate it because that might make us look bad. Well, nothing makes us look worse than failing to deliver decent service or deliver a project on time.
“All of that must be resolved before we go to the voters and say trust us with more capital money,” he added.
Tensions were evident at Tuesday’s meeting after agency staff told the board that part of the Twin Peaks Tunnel upgrade needs a redo after the original project didn’t replace a part as planned.
The 2.2milelong Twin Peaks Tunnel is the conduit for four of the city’s most heavily used light rail lines, carrying more than 80,000 passengers per weekday before the pandemic. The tunnel, constructed in 1918, was upgraded in 2018 with seismic retrofitting and structural replacements at the cost of around $ 50 million. The monthslong project resulted in service interruptions and the death of a Muni construction worker.
SFMTA officials said that during the project, contractors and staff chose to reuse the ballast, the rocky bed beneath the tracks that stabilizes the trackway and allows drainage to trickle through, instead of replacing it as intended. The decision, which was meant to save time and money, was not flagged for upper management, Kirschbaum said. If the ballast had been cleaned, it might have been costand time-effective, but it wasn’t, and now it’s more mud than rock, she said.
The work to replace the ballast will run from Nov. 30 through February 2021, with crews working six days a week.
Agency staff were slammed at the transportation authority board meeting over the project that Supervisor Aaron Peskin and others called a “screwup.”
“You’re out of excuses,” Peskin said.
Cat Carter, spokeswoman for advocacy group SF Transit Riders, said delays to complete projects and fixes after they’re finished “seem chronic.” She blamed historic mismanagement, lack of transparency and underfunding for public transportation, only worsened by the pandemic that has left SFMTA with a $ 30.7 million budget deficit unless more federal relief comes in.
“Transit is going to be essential to recover the economy,” she said. “It’s facing a financial cliff without having to go back and fix ballasts.”
The SFMTA is already underfunding maintenance. Jerad Weiner, the agency’s asset management unit manager, told the transportation authority board in September that eliminating a $ 3.2 billion backlog in equipment replacements will take two decades. The agency would need to triple its annual investment to get it done, he said.
SFMTA leaders said they are trying to learn as much as they can from past delays and failures. Supervisors pushed the agency to find more solutions.
“I want the MTA to have a way of holding the MTA accountable,” Mandelman said.