Cracked steel beam found at Transbay Transit Center could jeopardize operations

The crack discovered Tuesday in a steel beam that supports the rooftop garden of the new $ 2.2 billion Transbay Transit Center – forcing the terminal to close abruptly at rush hour – is the latest breakup. head center.

All buses in the center were immediately diverted to the Howard and Main Street Temporary Terminal, which was used for eight years during the construction of the new building. It will be used until officials have been able to thoroughly inspect the crack.

At the same time, Fremont Street, between Mission and Market Street, was closed to prevent vehicular traffic and pedestrian traffic under the transit center.

"The beam is cracked, the beam behavior is unpredictable," said Mark Zabaneh, executive director of Transbay's Joint Powers Authority.

"We will work tonight and tomorrow morning to better understand the cause of the crack."

The crack is found in a steel beam 6.5 feet deep on the third floor near Fremont Street – one of the dozens of beams that support the bus bridge and the park, topped with 5 or 6 feet of soil.

According to city hall sources, the problem was first discovered around 10 am, when workers installed ceiling panels – part of the list of work to be done on the project – noticed a crack in the roof. Fireproofing above. When they looked more closely, they saw that it was apparently more than the fireproofing that was cracked.

And like that, we are told, we called a battalion of engineers to look more closely.

In the early afternoon, an area on the third floor of the terminal, where AC Transit and other buses were entering and exiting, was cordoned off. Workers at the rescue station were present, but otherwise the bus activity seemed to proceed normally for several hours until a decision was made to close the premises.

San Francisco mayor, London Breed, declined to comment on Tuesday, referring instead to transbay center officials.

"Happy Transit Week," the supervisor Aaron Peskin, who criticized the project's exaggerated costs, said sarcastically Tuesday, that the reference to the National Transportation Week would be celebrated locally. "Hope this is going to be a unique problem."

The closure will certainly put more exercises on the other transit options, but BART officials are telling us that they are already working at full capacity, thanks to the 170,000 visitors to Salesforce's giant Dreamforce Convention at Moscone Center.

"We are overwhelmed," said BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost, only the district had 613 cars in service Tuesday compared to the usual 595.

Anyway, she said, "we only have so many train operators."

The news of the broken beam is the second biggest source of embarrassment for the center, which opened last month and is officially called the Salesforce Transit Center after the company acquired the property rights to the building and the garden.

. As we reported for the first time two weeks ago, the pedestrian walkway surrounding the rooftop park is crumbling – dozens of spaces located along the footpath. half a kilometer became the pedestrian equivalent of potholes.

Officials said that they were still trying to determine the exact cause of the bridge problem, and that a long-term solution has not yet been found. In the meantime, officials indicated that the short-term plan was to repair eroded sections as needed.

The center was designed 17 years ago as "Grand Central Station of the West" for buses and trains – but rail service remains a distant hope, leaving much of the space empty.

The building also cost $ 800 million more than expected.