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High Speed Rail Authority ignoring the Transbay Terminal in planning
By: John Upton
09/13/09 7:26 PM PDT
San Francisco-backed plans for a train stop beneath a planned new Transbay Transit Center are being ignored by California, city officials say.
The existing transit center at First and Mission streets is scheduled to be torn down and replaced by 2015. A train station is planned beneath the building in anticipation of a potential future rail extension from the Caltrain stop at Fourth and King streets near Mission Bay.
California High Speed Rail Authority staff directed their environmental consultants to investigate two potential sites for a train station in San Francisco, neither of which is the planned Transbay Transit Center location, according to Andrew Schwartz, outside counsel for the Transbay Joint Powers Authority.
The sites being investigated include the existing Caltrain stop at Fourth and King and city blocks bounded by Beale, Main, Mission and Harrison streets, according to Schwartz.
“We’re going to be providing information to the attorney general to show that the Beale Street and Fourth and King alternative locations are not physically, technically or financially feasible alternatives to the Transbay Transit Center location,” Schwartz said during a directors’ meeting Thursday.
Joint powers director Nathaniel Ford said during the hearing that it’s “very disturbing” that California is proposing alternative train station locations in San Francisco at such a late juncture.
“The voters, in passing the high speed rail bond last fall, clearly stated that the terminus was going to be the Transbay terminal,” Ford said. “This has been vetted quite early in the process.”
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