
How the Transbay Transit Center Is Reshaping San Francisco - CaliforniaKarl
http://projects.sfchronicle.com/2017/transbay-terminal/the-beginning/
======
jakelarkin
unless they complete the Caltrain DTX this is just a $3billion bus station. SF
supes keep punting because it doesn't buy them local votes. DTX has been
consistently surveyed as the most desired transit infrastructure by commuters
and the business community for _decades_. Politicians of course would rather
steal the funds for ineffectual projects that pander to some narrow
progressive pet-causes.

The $1.6 billion Central Subway should have been funneled into DTX. But of
course Rose Pak delivered the votes, so thats why that's getting built and DTX
is not.

~~~
m0llusk
This is bad framing. The central subway extends transit service to one of the
most densely populated neighborhoods in the US in return for taking down part
of 101. Problems completing train connections to the new Transbay station will
be resolved some other way.

~~~
CalChris
The Embarcadero Freeway (Highway 480) was originally built to connect with the
Golden Gate Bridge. Citizens hated this and the Board of Supervisors agreed to
stop further construction. It ended on Broadway if I remember, convenient for
Chinatown.

The Embarcadero Freeway came down with the 1989 freeway. Tearing it down vs
rebuilding it was a 6-5 vote for tearing it down. Chinatown deeply resented it
not being rebuilt and Agnos lost re-election. That probably led to the Central
Subway.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_480](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_480)

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cjensen
If you go with optimistic assumptions, and you seldom say "no" to feature
requests, your project will go badly.

They could have said "no" or "later as money allows" to a rooftop park, or to
a beautiful facade, or to an additional review just two years after the
previous review. A building paid for by a region ought not be redesigned just
because the voters of SF ask that the building accommodate rail unless the
same voters also pay for the accommodation.

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breckinloggins
Does anyone know why this sounds like it was written as a hit piece on Maria
Ayerdi-Kaplan? I'm interested in the back story there, because the tone is
quite nasty (not that I should expect anything else from our media today).

~~~
CalChris
Unlikely a hit piece. This is the Chronicle and Willie Brown writes for the
Chronicle. Hard to overstate that. Further, Ayerdi-Kaplan got ousted last year
and given a $400,000+ parachute that Brown negotiated for her.

[http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-
ross/article/Ouste...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-
ross/article/Ousted-Transbay-Center-exec-exits-with-big-perks-7253934.php)

------
mmanfrin
The absurdity of this thing not being directly connected to BART nor Caltrain
is so, pardon my language, unbelievably fucking stupid. This could have been
_the_ nexus between local transit, local tain, local bus, and interstate train
(HSR). But instead it's a bus station.

~~~
CalChris
I think the BART to SFO is a good idea and should have been built in from the
start. I'm not convinced that BART, Caltrain, bus, HSR, local rail all have to
converge on one spot in San Francisco.

CalTrain has 55,000 daily riders. AC Transit 15,000. BART, a lot. Are there
any economies of scale of putting all those people in one place? Does this
density bring anything useful?

CalTrain connects with BART in Millbrae. AC Transit connects with BART in many
places. The Capitol Corridor connects with BART in Richmond. Does this need
duplication in SF?

~~~
benjanik
Yes, having one place in the most congested part of the city where all people
can find their way home is very useful. Having to take BART to Milbrae before
switching to Caltrain is far more annoying than getting directly on Caltrain.
Same for any other transfer.

~~~
CalChris
Yes, it is the most congested part of the city and centralizing the transit
hub will make it more congested. I'd rather take BART to Millbrae than fight
through downtown to get to the Transit Center. That's insane.

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mjevans
Am I the only one irked by not using the same precision for numbers that
should be compared... E.G.

    
    
        "The budget for the huge complex has climbed from $1.6 billion to $2.259 billion."
    

Should be:

    
    
        The budget for the huge complex has climbed from $1.600 billion to $2.259 billion.
    
    

However in many places the article quotes individual costs in the hundreds of
millions. Even though it might be considered less grammatically correct a more
reader friendly approach would be to focus on a standard unit of measure
(millions of dollars) and present /all/ cost numbers in that scale over the
entire article.

~~~
rpowers
I was thinking the less precise number would force 2.259B to 2.3B.

------
johngalt
I always viewed bus/rail transit centers as a place outside of downtown where
all the bus traffic meets up to catch the train. Fewer stops for your train,
and you are only sending the full trains downtown. At the downtown hub there
are still a few circulator buses, but not commuter.

Seems odd to put a rail-fed bus station in the middle of downtown. Wouldn't
that just clog downtown with all the buses?

------
bassman9000
The TTC is going to be a glorified mall.

------
pmoriarty
_" The budget for the huge complex has climbed from $1.6 billion to $2.259
billion."_ ... _" $4 billion is the rough estimate solely for the rail
extension from Mission Bay, for a total of more than $6 billion."_

So how much is SF spending to help the homeless again?

It's pretty clear where the city's priorities are.

~~~
spikels
SFGov's latest annual budget has $305 million for homeless programs but this
doesn't include lots of homeless related spending, mostly medical but also
police, fire, cleaning, etc. There are also lots of non-profit, religious and
private orgs spending on homeless plus costs borne by local residents and
businesses.

I bet homelessness costs SF close to $1 billion a year. And the problem is not
getting much better. In fact increased spending over past 5 years has been
associated with even more homeless and problems.

[http://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-
money...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/aboutsfgate/article/Despite-money-and-
work-homelessness-in-SF-as-bad-11242946.php)

~~~
mikeyouse
> In fact increased spending over past 5 years has been associated with even
> more homeless and problems.

I think your causation line is drawn the wrong way there.. Housing prices in
San Francisco have dramatically increased in the past 5 years, which leads to
more people being at risk of homelessness. Of course money and services will
need to increase to accommodate the newly displaced.

~~~
wahern
Because of rent control, the _vast_ majority of renters are effectively
immunized from increases in housing costs.

The number of yearly evictions attributable to tear-downs or move-ins is
miniscule. When you hear that evictions have "doubled", the absolute numbers
are still in the single or double digits, in a city of over 800,000 people.
And most of those are otherwise legitimate reasons, like failure to pay rent.
The city has something like 20,000+ "homeless", most of whom are housed and
only homeless in a legal sense, for purposes of state and federal aid.
Development isn't causing the homeless problem... no way, no how.[1] At most
it makes it more costly to address the problem, because it increases the cost
of government funded housing projects; but it doesn't appreciably contribute
to the growth.

And don't forget, people are free to move _out_ of the area. I grew up in
trailer parks for much of my childhood. For the amount of subsidies people are
afforded in California, compared to living on the streets you could live an
infinitely better life outside the city in a trailer park--much nicer than the
trailers I grew up in rural Florida and Alabama. So a large part of the
problem is mobility and a willingness to move. That implicates complex social
and psychological issues, but it diminishes the culpability and relevance of
housing prices.

I support rent control wholeheartedly, but too many supposedly "progressive"
people in this town have a penchant for looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Nowhere in the country do tenants enjoy such incredible benefits. Newcomers
look at the insane rents and just assume it creates homelessness, but things
look completely different on the other side of 10 or 20 years.

[1] A recent study purported to show that a majority of street homeless were
evicted tenants. But they did this by asking tenants whether whether they had
previously rented in the city. Somebody who moves here, rents a place for 2
months before being evicted for failure to pay, would count, even though they
were for all intents and purposes they were immigrants. And of course it
assumes they're telling the whole truth--such as not conflating sleeping on
somebody's couch with being a renter. The lack of detail and substance in that
survey was very conspicuous, especially the fact that it would be nearly
impossible to square with eviction board statistics.

~~~
mjevans
Ironically the need for such a larger transit infrastructure is the lack of
very-high-rise building and trying to maintain 'character' in neighborhoods
that should now have near lumber limit MDUs.

Building a stronger transit system, such as this article is talking about,
does allow a city to spread further out, but both such a system to enable
lower housing density and commutes or more housing units (lessening the need
to commute) are plagued by NIMBYs in many (most/all?) metropolitan areas (at
least all the ones I've heard out outside of Texas / "the south").

~~~
wahern
Personally, I'd like to see the city exploring an expansion of rent control in
exchange for improved developers' rights, including automatic approvals and
increased density. Currently only buildings built before circa 1979 are rent
controlled; anything built after is exempt. This creates an obvious dilemma
for a city and community which evolved and adapted to the economic tradeoffs
of rent control.

What if developers opted into rent control after an initial 20-30 year payback
period? It would be easy to create property instruments that ensure a property
became rent-controlled after a certain period.[1] Part of the reason
(certainly not the whole reason) NIMBY politics is so powerful in the city in
the face of such gargantuan supply-demand imbalance is because homeowners have
been able to conscript renters into their fight against development on the
premise that development diminishes the rent control stock. I think something
like 70% of households in this city rent, which means the underlying self-
interests at play are nothing like those in suburban municipalities. Dangle
the stick of _more_ rent controlled stock in front of the population, and we
might see a huge shift in opinion.

[1] I believe there's a state law which prevents San Francisco from expanding
rent control. But I bet that a quasi-voluntary system might either pass muster
under the law, or at least be an easier sell to Sacramento in exchange for
loosening the restriction.

