Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Barbara Boxer, Rep. George Miller, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Mayor Gavin Newsom, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, District 6 Supervisor Chris Daly and other dignitaries, participated yesterday in a groundbreaking ceremony of the first high-speed rail station in the United States. Photos by Michael J. Costa.
From Singer Associates
August 12, 2010
Federal, State and local officials joined together yesterday with the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA) and their honored guests to officially break ground on the Transbay Transit Center – the northern terminus for the California High Speed Rail system and a multi-modal facility that will accommodate eleven transit operators and serve more than 45 million passengers a year.
“Today, in breaking ground on the Transbay Transit Center, we are opening a new chapter in that history of progress,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “We are coming together to create jobs and revitalize our economy, and we are laying the first building blocks of a new ‘Grand Central Station of the West.’”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi
The project is estimated to create more than 48,000 jobs in its first phase of construction, which will last seven years. These jobs include the people who will design, build and operate the facility, the manufacturing jobs created by the materials being utilized in the facility and the businesses providing consumer goods and services to workers and the passengers utilizing the Transit Center.
“This is one of the most important and transformational public transportation projects in America. Once the dust has settled, San Francisco’s skyline will be transformed – as will transportation, housing, and employment choices for people across the Bay area and beyond,” said United States Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. The U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration are proud to contribute to the first phase of this effort.”
US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood
The full Phase 1 (Transit Center) and Phase 2 (Downtown Rail Extension) project and build out of the Redevelopment Plan will also increase the gross regional product in the Bay Area by $80 billion.
“This is a historic day for San Francisco and for the entire State,” said Mayor Newsom. “History will write that High-Speed Rail and a new engine for job creation and economic growth in California began today, with the groundbreaking of this project. It is a culmination of decades of planning to fulfill our City’s vision of leading the nation as a transit-first City and a hub of a modern High-Speed Rail system.”
Mayor Gavin Newsom
For more than 40 years, San Francisco has been planning for the replacement of the outdated and seismically deficient Transbay Terminal at First and Mission streets. The new one million square foot Transbay Transit Center will serve as San Francisco’s next landmark and will feature a 5.4-acre public park on the roof of the Transit Center.
The five-story Transit Center includes: one above-grade bus level, a ground floor entrance on Mission Street, concourse level, and two below-grade rail levels serving Caltrain and future California High-Speed Rail.
“We are very proud of what our facility will do for San Francisco, and we are equally proud of the fact that we will become the first new station on the High-Speed Rail system to move into construction,” said Nathaniel P. Ford, Sr., Chairman of the TJPA Board. “This is a moment in history to be remembered. While we break ground on this significant achievement, we must be proud of the work we’ve done and for the foundation built by those who came before us.”
The $4.2 billion Transbay Transit Center Project is funded by various funding partners including the Federal Government, the State of California, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the San Francisco County and San Mateo County Transportation Authorities and AC Transit, among others. The first phase of the program, which includes constructing the new Transit Center, is fully funded.
“Today we deliver to the public the first new High-Speed Rail station in the United States, the first modern regional bus station in more than 60 years, and after more than 100 years, a downtown San Francisco train station,” said Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan, Executive Director, TJPA. “This is truly an important time for our City and our State. We are making a real and lasting investment to improve our public infrastructure system while protecting our environment and creating new jobs.”
The new Transbay Transit Center is scheduled to open in August 2017.
For more information, visit www.transbaycenter.org
Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood (right) with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Boxer.
Speaker Pelosi celebrates the Transbay Transit Center groundbreaking with labor organizer Leroy King
The Hunger Site
August 13, 2010 at 7:01 am
@Robert: Glad I’m not the only one who thinks Nancy Pelosi should be identified as the war criminal that she is every time she appears in civic capacity.
Re stimulus funds: High speed rail was considered the only bright spot for mass transit and sustainability; there were no operating funds to stop fare hikes and service cuts all over the country, as funds flowed for new highways and bridges—capital intense building projects.
And high speed rail was funded as such, not because, as mass transit, it’s a sustainable goal.
As a capital intensive building project meant to enrich corporations and increase measurements like GDP, it’s unsustainable.
Our federal legislators couldn’t consider instead leaving a little change, by stopping fare hikes, in the hands of a bunch of bus riders so irresponsible as to be poor enough to ride the bus, or making sure that their bus lines would keep coming so they could get to work or look for some.
Their only goal was putting money into the hands of corporations who were, of course, supposed to arrange for a bit to trickle down, in the spirit of Ronald Reagan.
August 12, 2010 at 2:39 pm
“I work for you!” Newsom reportedly said recently to the homeless that languished at the Transbay Terminal for years.
No.
He worked for this moment which will doubtless be followed by the flowing of much champagne.
When Obama’s measly stimulus funds were apportioned where did they go?
To “shovel ready” projects such as this.
And Nancy Pelosi!
War criminal.
Enough said.
August 12, 2010 at 2:09 pm
When Singer and Associates are repping a project, then you KNOW that it is going to turn into something that requires the best damage control that money can buy.
Everyone wants a high speed multimodal rail terminal, don’t get me wrong. But not everyone can scrounge up $2,000,000,000 to finance this project through to usability.
Show me the money or I’ll show you an empty windswept dusty money pit that will scar eastern SOMA for the better part of this decade, and that means lotsa biz for Singer to make you think otherwise and keep the cash flowing into the proper pockets.
-marc