Transbay Transit Center going off track

SAN FRANCISCO — Statewide bullet trains have been presented by transit officials as the silver bullet The City needs to finally bring rail transit downtown, but some are questioning whether a necessary extension should receive financial help from bonds for high-speed rail approved by voters Nov. 4.

Proposition 1A, passed in last week’s election, authorized $9.95 billion in bond money for a high speed-rail line that would take passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in a mere 2½ hours. In anticipation of the project, the first phase of the new Transbay Transit Center is being built with the assumption that a major rail corridor will connect to the new terminal.

However, that would necessitate a $2 billion, 1.3-mile extension of Caltrain’s tracks from their current terminus at Fourth and King streets in Mission Bay to downtown’s Transbay Transit Center at First and Mission streets, as well as a “train box” — a massive space underneath the bus terminal big enough to hold six rail platforms and tracks — that could later be tunneled into and developed into a station for Caltrain and high-speed trains.

Transbay Joint Powers Authority spokesman Adam Alberti said the authority began lobbying for funds from the high-speed rail bond in a letter issued last month.

But at least one authority has eschewed the possibility that high-speed rail will pay for the extension.

“We do not need First and Mission. I am satisfied with Fourth and Townsend,” said Judge Quentin Kopp, chairman of the High Speed Rail Authority. “We are not going to pay an extra billion-plus dollars to take the high-speed rail an extra 1.4 miles.”

The extension will have to be resolved — and funded — by The City and Caltrain, he said.

But spokeswoman Christine Dunn said Caltrain has not considered devoting any funds to the project, and it would have to be funded by The City and the Transbay project.

Jerry Hill, a member of Transbay’s board of directors and state Assembly member-elect, said that though Transbay hopes to secure some funding for the extension from the high-speed rail, they are not seeing the project as a “cash cow,” and the success of neither high-speed rail nor the Transbay Transit Center depends on the extension.

Rod Diridon, Kopp’s colleague on the High Speed Rail Authority, said it would be a shame if high-speed rail did not reach downtown.

kworth@sfexaminer.com

Future rail projects

Caltrain wants to link to the planned Transbay Transit Center.

$9.95 billion Bond funding for high-speed rail approved by voters Nov. 4

1.3 miles Proposed underground downtown extension of Caltrain commuter rail line

6 Trains and platforms to be accommodated by proposed train station under the new Transbay Transit Center

$2 billion Unfunded cost to extend the Caltrain commuter rail line from Fourth and King streets to the new Transbay Transit Center

Sources: Transbay Joint Powers Authority, Caltrain, California High Speed Rail Authority, BayRail Alliance