SAN FRANCISCO — The transit center that will eventually be the San Francisco terminal for high speed rail could remain closed another six months.
The San Francisco Chronicle offers that estimate in its latest report on the Transbay Transit Center, which was shut down just six weeks after its opening in August. [See “San Francisco transit center to remain closed another week following discovery of second cracked beam,” Trains News Wire, Sept. 27, 2018.] The newspaper reports that welding problems are suspected as the cause of cracks in two 4-inch steel beams that shut down the $2.2 billion facility, designed to handle buses and, eventually, high speed rail.
If that proves to be the case, a fix is likely to take months, and it’s possible other beams will need to be checked for similar defects.
Metropolitan Transportation Commission spokesman Randy Rentschler told the Chronicle, “It’s simply too early to speculate” about a time frame for reopening the facility.
