San Francisco’s Salesforce Transit Center will reopen July 1.
SAN FRANCISCO >> Nine months after the $2.2 billion bus depot closed to the public, the Salesforce Transit Center will reopen July 1, officials said Tuesday.
The announcement followed a letter Monday from a panel of independent experts certifying the building is safe. It closed in September, just six weeks after it opened, when workers discovered large cracks in two structural steel beams.
Although repairs of the cracked beams were completed last month, officials were waiting for the five-member oversight panel to finish a review of the entire building to determine it was safe for reopening. Appointed by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) at the behest of Oakland and San Francisco mayors, Libby Schaaf and London Breed, the panel has been conducting over
sight of an investigation by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which is in charge of constructing and maintaing the building, into what caused the four-inch-thick beams to crack.
In a letter Monday to the mayors and the authority, MTC Executive Director Therese McMillan said the panel agreed with the authority that there were no other issues with the building.
“We can represent to you and the public alike confidence that the Transbay Transit Center’s girder problem was isolated and that the appropriate repairs have been performed,” McMillan wrote. “We agree the steel structure is ready for service.”
MUNI and Golden Gate Transit will provide bus service from the street level of the bus plaza beginning in early July, officials said. AC Transit’s 26 transbay bus lines, Westcat Lynx and Greyhound will resume service to the terminal’s bus deck sometime later in the summer to allow time to retrain bus drivers and to give riders ample notice of the change. Bus passengers A $2billion transit terminal in San Francisco that was shut down six weeks after opening last year will re-open July 1. The Transbay Joint Powers Authority said Tuesday it has fixed the cracks that led to the terminal’s abrupt closure in September.
have been using the temporary bus terminal, at the corner of Howard and Main streets, since the transit center closed.
The 5.4-acre park, food trucks, public art and other amenities, however, will open on July 1, officials said.
Authorities said it was errors that occurred during the fabrication of the beams, coupled with the center’s unique design, that contributed to the cracks forming in the steel. Multiple layers of oversight failed to catch the flaws until they grew into gaping fissures. Crews in April and May sandwiched high-strength steel plates on either side of the cracked girders, bolting
the plates in place to fortify the weakened beams.
In addition to investigating the cause of the cracks and devising a repair, authority officials and members of the peer review panel performed a review of the entire building, looking for any conditions that might be similar to the beams that cracked. That extra layer of review took several months and the panel’s concurrence with the authority that no more work was needed was the final approval the authority needed to set a date for reopening.