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High-speed rail to downtown S.F. is back on track — but the price tag keeps going up



John King
Jan. 18, 2023

Five years after the debut of San Francisco’s grandiose transit center that features only buses and a rooftop park, regional transit agencies are gearing up to try to win the federal funding necessary to add rail service to the mix.

That new effort includes a new price tag for the long-promised expansion — $6.7 billion, up from $5 billion in 2016.

This is the estimated cost to bring commuter trains and a route for high-speed rail service from Mission Bay to First and Mission streets by 2033. Besides the inflation that comes with the passage of seven years, transit planners say the revised budget accounts for extra costs that could arise in the decade that it would take to complete the 2-mile extension.

They also argue that while the costs are steep, the investment would pay dividends for decades to come.

“This is a generational infrastructure project,” said Adam Van de Water, executive director of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which operates the transit center that opened in 2018. “We want to connect San Francisco to Silicon Valley and Los Angeles in a sustainable way.... If you want to compete with automobiles and planes, the service has to be convenient, reliable and affordable.”

An underground rail connection has been part of the center’s concept since planning began in 1999, and the first phase included a federally funded concrete shell to hold the platform. But expansion plans were put on hold as costs swelled from $1.6 billion to $2.26 billion for the first phase — the futuristic three-block-long structure that spans First and Fremont streets and is cloaked in an undulating veil of perforated white metal.

In doing its budget projections for the second phase, the agency increased the contingency costs from 30% to 37% — a tacit acknowledgment of the reality that large infrastructure projects rarely go as smoothly as hoped. The revised budget also jettisons the concept of an underground walkway from the Embarcadero BART Station to the transit center — a stroke of value-engineering that, Van de Water said, trims $220 million from the budget.

“Convenience aside, that (connection) is not essential,” Van de Water said. “Active street life is a good thing. People can walk on the sidewalk.”

For all the skepticism that has surrounded the rail extension to the station that runs behind Salesforce Tower — and is called Salesforce Transit Center after the tech behemoth purchased naming rights for 25 years in 2017 — the campaign got a boost in 2021. That year, after the passage of an infrastructure bill by Congress, the federal Department of Transportation said the extension was eligible to apply for part of the bill’s $23 billion set aside for new transit projects.

The trick now is to be selected from a pool of what could be several dozen applicants.

Assuming its eight-member Board of Directors gives the green light next month, the transit agency will apply to federal officials in April. This would kick off a detailed review of the proposed project, including the revised budget estimate. The Department of Transportation would then rate application in terms of substance and national merit; the higher the rating, the better the chance of ultimate approval.

The local schedule calls for a bid for full funding to follow in August. If this is successful, the downtown extension would be part of the 2024 federal budget and the grant could be signed off in early 2025. From then, Washington would pay half of all project costs up to $6.7 billion.

“Because we’ve been a regional priority for so long, and have done so much groundwork, we should be ahead of most of them,” Van de Water theorized, referring to other applicants.

One factor in the Bay Area’s favor is that the project has full environmental approvals. It also has several local funding sources built into various bonds and sales tax measures, giving it some measure of financial credibility.

In a best-case scenario — which hasn’t often been the case for a project that in 2010 was budgeted at $2.6 billion with a target opening date of 2020 — construction of the tunnel beneath Townsend and Second streets to the existing station could begin in 2025. This would allow service to begin in 2032, Van de Water said.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/artic...t-17724143.php