BART’s new Transbay Tube may be halted
The Bay Area’s ambitious plan to build a new rail crossing from San Francisco to the East Bay is getting scaled back and could move forward without a second Transbay Tube for BART.
Initial renderings for the megaproject, known as Link21, envisioned a four-track rail crossing that would serve both BART and other rail operators such as Amtrak, Caltrain and High-Speed Rail. The project, still decades away from reality, has a placeholder completion date of 2040 with an estimated price tag of $29 billion.
However, updated conceptual renderings show only a rail crossing for either BART or regional rail operators.
Another transbay rail crossing — namely a second BART tube — has been talked about for decades. But ridership on BART and other Bay Area rail agencies has declined dramatically since the pandemic, and Link21 planners now say that the project, as first envisioned, would not generate enough ridership to justify the cost of building it.
“Building two new crossings — one for BART and one for regional rail — is not cost effective for the amount of demand we’re anticipating,” Chester Fung, a planner involved in Link21, said Tuesday during a Link21 committee meeting. “So we will be advancing concepts with only BART or only regional rail in the crossing.”
It’s unclear whether the project’s estimated cost has changed under the shift in planning. The new renderings show four possible options for a regional rail crossing and two alternatives for a second BART Transbay Tube. All six renderings envision the rail crossing with underground tracks that connect to San Francisco’s Salesforce Transit Center.
One rendering of a regional rail crossing shows a straight shot from West Oakland and Emeryville to San Francisco, running parallel to BART’s Transbay Tube. The other three regional rail renderings pass through Alameda before crossing the bay to San Francisco, though their alignments in the East Bay vary.
The conceptual renderings for a second BART Transbay Tube are unchanged from the ones unveiled last fall, and suggest a potential expansion to the Geary corridor and San Francisco’s west side. Both BART-only renderings also show a possible new infill station in Oakland’s San Antonio neighborhood east of Lake Merritt, as well as stations in Jack London Square and Alameda.
Their key difference is where they align in San Francisco. Whereas one concept shows a direct connection from Alameda to Salesforce Transit Center, the other shows a route with three potential stations in Mission Bay, Fourth and Townsend streets and Third and Mission streets before connecting to Salesforce Transit Center.
Link21 planners will make a recommendation on an alignment in 2024.
Before the pandemic, BART trains were filled to the brim with passengers as they crossed the bay, causing officials to bill a second Transbay Tube as a necessary investment to expand the system’s transbay capacity.
However, telework has depressed BART ridership, which remains at about 40% of pre-COVID levels, and it’s unclear when or if the system’s ridership will return to 2019 levels. Updated ridership projections by BART show ridership at about 49% of pre-pandemic levels by 2025.
BART’s projected “fiscal cliff ” also adds uncertainty to this faraway project. Some BART board directors suggested pausing the Link21 project while the agency looks for ways to cut costs to reduce a massive budget deficit projected to take effect in 2025, after the agency runs out of its federal pandemic aid.