1st bus service at new Transbay Transit Center slips into mid-2018

1st bus service at new Transbay Transit Center slips into mid-2018


It’s looking like the first AC Transit buses won’t be pulling into San Francisco’s $2.2 billion Transbay Transit Center until as late as June because of delays in getting the megastructure wired.

Officials had hoped to finish construction on the transit center by Christmas and have buses running in and out by spring. But now it appears that the building won’t be done until March, which will push back the opening day of service.

“Some 50 miles of wires still need to go into the terminal,” said Mark Zabaneh, executive director of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the agency that’s building the transit center just south of Mission Street in the Financial District.

AC Transit, the center’s main tenant, won’t be taking riders to and from the building until a couple of months after the last wire is strung and the paint is dry. That’s because AC plans to start running new double-decker buses, and drivers will have to be trained on navigating through the new building and along the ramps leading to and from the Bay Bridge.

“There is a lot of operator knowledge that has to happen before we can fully start the service,” said AC Transit spokesman Robert Lyles.

Buses are going to be the main act at the transit center, which originally was also envisioned as the northern terminus for a high-speed rail line running to Los Angeles. The building includ es the shell of an underground station for the bullet trains and an electrified Caltrain, but the money to actually lay the tracks and bring trains downtown remains very much up in the air.

As a result, we’ll be getting the world’s biggest bus station. At some point.

Strike one: The Oakland A’s pitch for a new ballpark next to Laney College got a big thumbs-down from the school’s faculty and students, with representatives of both groups voting “no” on the idea of a 35,000-seat ballpark.

“We heard from our members that they are overwhelmingly against the stadium,” said Jennifer Shanoski, president of the Peralta Federation of Teachers Local 1603.

After polling members, the union’s executive counsel voted to oppose the school entering into negotiations with the A’s to lease 13 acres of land owned by the Peralta Community College District. The union represents faculty, counselors and librarians at Laney and the district’s other three schools.

“A baseball park is going to have games happening on many, many days when we have classes,” Shanoski said. “There will be construction, and that will of course be loud and disruptive, and it will affect the traffic in the area, which is already a problem.”

Shanoski said the union also shares the concerns of residents in nearby working-class neighborhoods that a ballpark will touch off a wave of gentrification.

“There is the potential for speculators buying up land and displacing both nearby residents and residents of Chinatown, where rents are already sky high,” Shanoski said.

The Associated Students of Laney College also weighed in with a “no” vote. “The night games, the alcohol, the disruption — it would destroy everything that Laney stands for,” said the group’s president, Keith Welch.

As for the money that leasing the land from the Peralta district would bring to Laney, Welch said, “The A’s think money can move anything. Well, it won’t move us.”

A recent poll conducted for the Oakland Chamber of Commerce indicated that city residents back the ballpark proposal by a 2-1 ratio. But at least one City Council member, Noel Gallo, said the students and faculty may have a point about this particular location.

“I was surprised that the A’s chose this site to begin with,” said Gallo, whose district does not includ e the would-be ballpark spot. “I would like to see them stay at the Coliseum, where the infrastructure is already in place.”

Gallo also noted that Oakland and Alameda County voters have invested millions of dollars in the Laney campus.

“This property may be a challenge to get it approved,” Gallo said.

The Peralta district’s Board of Trustees will begin studying a possible deal next month. Expect the faculty union to be deeply involved in what is likely to be a yearlong process.

“The money and energy going into studying a ballpark could be better used elsewhere,” Shanoski said.

A’s President Dave Kaval declined to comment on the two votes, but said the team is focused “on working with all stakeholders” to come up with a plan that “advances the mission of Peralta colleges.”

Looking down the road, if talks don’t go smoothly, Laney’s faculty and 20,000 students could represent a potent force at City Hall — and at the ballot box.