Salesforce Transit Center


The Salesforce Transit Center, also known as the Transbay Transit Center, is a transit center in downtown San Francisco. It serves as the primary bus terminal for the San Francisco Bay Area, and is proposed as a possible future rail terminal. The centerpiece of the San Francisco Transbay development, the construction is governed by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority. The building sits one block south-east of Market Street, a primary commercial and transportation artery.
After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the 1939 Transbay Terminal, voters approved funds for the new Transbay Transit Center in 1999. Construction on the first phase, the bus terminal, began in 2010. Limited Muni bus service began in December 2017, and full service from AC Transit and other regional and intercity bus operators began in August 2018. Full funding has not yet been secured for the second phase of construction, the Downtown Rail Extension, which hopes to add an underground terminal station for Caltrain and California High-Speed Rail.
The transit center was closed for repairs in September 2018 after cracks were found in structural beams; services resumed in July and August 2019.

Design

Designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, the Salesforce Transit Center is about long and wide. It occupies the entire block between Minna and Natoma Streets, and stretches from Beale Street to east of 2nd Street. The first phase of the project includes the aboveground structure plus a belowground shell for the second phase. The structure has four levels: the ground floor with entrances, retail space, ticketing, and Muni/Golden Gate Transit boarding platforms; the second floor with retail space, food hall, offices, and Greyhound ticket counter and waiting room; the bus deck with bus bays surrounding a central waiting area; and the rooftop park.
The bus deck has a dedicated highway ramp to the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and an off-site bus storage facility under the western Bay Bridge approach. In order to allow buses with doors on the right to serve the central platform on the bus deck, buses circulate clockwise while inside the terminal. The bus bridge includes a traffic light to facilitate the transition between right-hand traffic and left-hand traffic.
The rooftop park, designed by PWP Landscape Architecture, includes an amphitheater, a restaurant, and water features. The inclusion of the park was part of the winning bid in the architectural design composition for the structure.
The building includes a free, 20-passenger aerial tram to provide access from street level to the rooftop park. Described as a "whimsical gondola" by the building's architects, it was the second passenger-carrying aerial tram to operate in San Francisco, after the one formerly located at the Cliff House. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, it is "frequently out of order", but the park level is also accessible by stairs, escalators and elevator.
The second phase of the project, constructed as part of the Downtown Rail Extension, will add a two-level underground train station to be served by Caltrain and California High-Speed Rail. The platform area will have three island platforms serving six tracks. A mezzanine with ticketing and waiting areas will be located above the platform and below the ground-level entrances. A pedestrian tunnel was planned to be constructed below Beale Street to Embarcadero station, connecting the Transbay Transit Center with BART and Muni Metro. This was later scrapped as a cost-saving measure. The proposed second Transbay Tube, which may be used by Caltrain, CAHSR, and/or BART, may also connect to the Transit Center. This extension would cost as much as $6billion on top of the $2billion already spent, and is currently unfunded.

Public art

Based on the policies established by the FTA encouraging the inclusion of public art in transportation facilities, the TJPA committed $4.75million to fund the creation of public artwork for the Program. Working with the San Francisco Arts Commission, the TJPA oversees the planning and development of the public art program. Initially there were five artists included in the program: James Carpenter, Julie Chang, Tim Hawkinson, Jenny Holzer and Ned Kahn. In June 2017, SFAC and TJPA announced the planned Hawkinson installation would be cancelled as "the nature of the materials, the sculpture's size, and its location" made it "a particularly complex engineering task."
  • James Carpenter's installation, titled Parallel Light Fields, consists of illuminated ceiling segments and benches along Shaw Alley, a pedestrian/retail corridor at ground level beneath the Transit Center.
  • Julie Chang's installation, titled The Secret Garden, is the decorated terrazzo floor of the Grand Hall in the Transit Center.
  • Jenny Holzer's installation, titled White Light, is a large scrolling LED sign approximately high, displaying text specific to the San Francisco Bay Area. The sign is installed just below the elliptical skylight of the Grand Hall in the Transit Center.
  • Ned Kahn's installation, titled Bus Jet Fountain, consists of water jets on the rooftop of the Transit Center. The jets are designed to respond to the flow of buses on the deck below.
  • Tim Hawkinson's planned installation was a high sculpture to serve as a "guardian" for travelers. It was to have been partially constructed from material salvaged from the demolition of the Transbay Terminal, but due to cost and engineering issues, was cancelled.

    History

Planning

The original Transbay Terminal opened in 1939 to serve Key System and East Bay Electric Lines commuter trains and Sacramento Northern Railway interurban trains operating over the new Bay Bridge. It was converted to a bus terminal in 1958 and began serving AC Transit commuter buses. The structure was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, necessitating replacement.
In 1995, Caltrain agreed to study extending its commuter rail service from its Fourth and King terminus closer to the Financial District, including whether the obsolete Transbay Terminal should be removed, remodeled, or rebuilt. Ultimately, it was decided that the Transbay Terminal should be rebuilt, with the rail extension entering the Terminal under Second Street. In November 1999, San Francisco voters adopted Proposition H declaring that Caltrain shall be extended downtown into a new regional intermodal transit station constructed to replace the former Transbay Terminal. The Transbay Joint Powers Authority was founded in 2001 as the administrative joint powers authority for the project.
The final Environmental Impact Report was published in 2004. The project was divided into two phases, with Phase 1 being demolition of the original terminal and construction of the Transbay Transit Center, and Phase 2 being the Downtown Rail Extension.
In 2006, developers agreed to a new Mello-Roos tax district in the area surrounding the Transbay Transit Center in order for permits for higher buildings to move forward. San Francisco set the tax rate in 2012 at 0.55 percent of assessed value; due to rising real estate prices, however, the 2014 tax burden had risen by nearly 50% compared to the 2012 tax burden, and the developers threatened to pull their building plans entirely or sue the city. The lawsuits never materialized, however.
On September 20, 2007, the design proposed by César Pelli of Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects was chosen for both the Transit Center and the Transbay Tower, now known as Salesforce Tower.

Construction

The first phase of construction consisted of the aboveground bus terminal, including retail spaces and the rooftop park, plus the concrete shell of the underground rail levels. It cost $2.4 billion, of which $500 million was for the underground shell. On August 7, 2010, all bus service was moved to the interim Temporary Transbay Terminal. The $18 million outdoor terminal is located on the block bounded by Folsom, Beale, Howard and Main Streets in the South of Market district, two blocks from the site of the former Transbay Terminal. Ground was broken for the new Transbay Transit Center four days later. Much of the initial construction work was underground, and aboveground evidence of construction did not appear until late 2014. As originally planned, the Transit Center was anticipated to be complete by late 2016, with bus operations expected to commence by August 2017.
Demolition of the former Transbay Terminal and ramps was completed in September 2011. Amtrak Thruway bus service, which connects to Amtrak trains at Emeryville station, moved from the Ferry Station Post Office Building to the Temporary Transbay Terminal on March 2, 2015. Under a naming rights deal announced on July 7, 2017, the transit center was given the official name of Salesforce Transit Center; the adjoined City Park took the official name Salesforce Park.
The first phase of the new Transit Center was originally to be completed by the end of 2017. This was delayed to March 2018 in July 2017, and to June 2018 that December. On December 26, 2017, Muni began operating route buses into the ground level of the terminal in order to meet the federal deadline of some service to the terminal beginning in 2017. On June 16, 2018, Muni began operating all,,,, and buses to the surface level of the terminal.

Opening

The first phase opened for full bus service on August 12, 2018; the rooftop park opened on the same date. Greyhound and BoltBus service moved from the Temporary Transbay Terminal three days later on August 15, leaving Amtrak Thruway as the sole remaining bus operator using the Temporary Transbay Terminal. Amtrak buses began using a street-level stop at Salesforce Plaza on Mission Street near Fremont Street on October 28, 2019. That stop was temporarily relocated along Mission Street to near 2nd Street on November 9, 2020.
Without the revenue from the 100,000 expected daily rail passengers, the bus-only terminal was expected to lose as much as $20 million annually. Daily AC Transit ridership to/from Transbay Transit Center was 17,436 in February 2020, but just 3,895 in April 2023.