Fremont Street to reopen after repair of Transbay Transit Center Monday



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San Francisco's suburbanites will receive a gift for the week of the start of work on Monday, when the Fremont Street portion that passes under the damaged Transbay transit center will be open to traffic, Transbay officials said Sunday.

The opening of Fremont, between Howard and Mission Streets, comes nearly three weeks after the cracking of steel beams over the highway. The street was originally scheduled to open on Friday, but the authorities ordered a delay, while the workers reinforced the structure under the two broken beams.


Transbay's Joint Powers Authority announced on Sunday that workers had crossed four levels, including the third-floor bridge and an underground railway station, on the east side of the $ 2.2-billion transit center.



The discovery on 25 September of cracks in two critical support beams prompted the authorities to close the transit center and its rooftop park just six weeks after the grand opening.


The street was closed to what officials described as "a lot of caution".

Construction crews installed temporary supports to relieve cracked beams over Fremont Street and then reinforced other levels. Transbay officials also used hydraulic jacks and support beams to wedge the other side of the center, above First Street, but no cracks were found in this area.

The plan now is to take samples of the metal girders so that the engineers can test them and, hopefully, find out why they have cracked and then come up with a repair plan.

Beam repairs may take several weeks and buses will not cross the center before the work is completed, but Transbay officials say the rooftop park could reopen early in November.


Peter Fimrite is a writer at the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @pfimrite


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