Is San Francisco's New Transit Center a Waste?
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- Опубликовано: 2 фев 2025
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San Francisco opened the Salesforce Transit Center in 2019, and currently serves buses only. It does not connect to local transit trains and will not serve longer-distance trains until at least 2033. Does that make this station a failure? Or maybe it's forward-thinking?
Resources on this topic:
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sfocii.org/sit... Transbay Redevelopment Plan Area Basemap for Website (002).pdf
sfocii.org/sit... Redevelopment Project Map_current_06.15.22.pdf
www.sfmta.com/... Item 15 T-Third Phase 3 Concept Study.pdf
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Unfun fact. The Amtrak buses connecting from trains in Emeryville were suposed to stop at the Transit Center. The rent for one bus stall was so high that Amtrak could not afford it and instead stops on Mission St right outside the Transit Center.
Are you kidding me?
Why charge rent for a bus stall
@@pal2011While I don’t agree with the concept, TJPA (owner and operator of the Transit Center) charges rent to all transit operators that use the facility. Some would call this ‘balancing-the-budget.’
That’s funny because I did take Amtrak last month and it stopped right outside smh.
@@pal2011 airports charge rents to use their gates too, it's not really new
agreed - as a San Franciscan, it is just a expensive intermodal bus station now. What you missed is how great the roof top park is. It was carefully designed with seven different areas to reflect all seven different world Mediterranean climates, and filled with rare plants from each. We locals actually use the park. Hopefully, someday there will be trains.
it's not that great. one walk around and you're done. I'm sure they don't want locals there - gawd they might eat the dogs
Visited San Francisco last April. I was blown away by the roof top park! There was a huge Chinese celebration going on and so much to do. I was in town for two nights, 3 days and visited this park 2 of the three days. I am incredibly envious of y'all, you have a wonderful thing here!!
there is no one around to help guide you, so if you get lost, you could be walking around searching for a way to get back to familiar places. They need you are here maps at least
Its hardly my favorite park in the city but I go there for Andytown coffee from time to time. Its reasonably quiet for being in downtown too.
I like the idea of the park but they are so hostile to unhoused ppl and it just creates a bad vibe. the park being private is sooooo evil like salesforce sucks it just feels so orwellian. If there were actually good local vendors around, I would like it but, the entire area and center are hella dead
One huge feature you left out: Those transbay buses previously had to use the same I-80 offramps as all the other freeway traffic, and then crawl around SoMa through traffic lights and turns. Because of the transit center they have a dedicated ramp in/out of the station and never reach street level. It's a great benefit for everyone: Bus service is faster/more predictable, and drivers/cyclists/pedestrians are spared the noise and congestion of all those buses.
Muni gets around saying Salesforce. If a line terminates at the Salesforce Transit Center, the display on the front just says “SF Transit Center” where most people would assume it means San Francisco
This was supposed to be only Phase 1 of the project. Phase 2 was called DTX (Downtown Rail Extension) that connected Caltrain & Muni to the Transit Center via underground pedestrian walkways. It never received full funding thanks to the Transit Center's concrete cracking in the first months of opening, and the infamous adjacent Millenium Tower blaming their sinking and tilt on the Transit Center construction work.
IIRC it's finally moving forward under the Portal project, and received ~$3B in federal funding earlier this year. It isn't supposed to be completed until 2032 at the earliest, though.
The DTX project is moving forward. The Caltrain electrification is done and that project also supports HSR.
The Millennium Tower's issues were caused by not building a deep enough foundation with the local soft soil, right?
@@andyjay729 The actual suspected cause isn’t publicly available per the settlement agreement. The builder used friction piles instead of normal piles. Normal piles are pushed all the way to bedrock. The bedrock at this location is waaaaay deep. Friction piles relies on the friction between the pile and the surrounding dirt. The pile is driven into the ground until the friction equals the weight of the building plus a safety factor. Friction piles are commonly used in SF because they’re cheaper than normal piles in these cases. The technology has been around for 50+ years.
@@andyjay729 There are other videos that speculate on the cause. A lot of them is click bait. They circle around the issue but don’t actually explain a possible cause. I wasted a lot of time watching them. There is one that does sound plausible but I don’t remember the title. It was a three or four part series.
At first, they blamed it on the Transbay Center construction. They said too much water was removed and cause the sinking. However, the Transbay Center is on the wrong side of the tower to cause the sinking it experienced.
Sitting on the salesforce bench, eating salesforce ice cream, at the salesforce park, located near the salesforce tower, at the salesforce street, wearing salesforce shirt, and salesforce pants. watching a salesforce tutorial, on my salesforce phone, to use the salesforce services
Definitely feels like it was significantly sponsored by Salesforce as a perk to its employees commuting into the adjacent office building.
don’t forget about your salesfarce branded north face backpack!
@@crash.override I don't think they'd have spent $100m just as a perk to their employees
Grand Central station is named after a corporation that existed 120 years ago.
That was of course is the New York Central Railroad which went bankrupt in 1970. People don't remember that it was corporation at one point before the city took it over.
100m is very generous investment in our transit infrastructure and I don’t think people should discount it. Additionally, going to work in an office is currently the main use case of transit to FiDi as it is not a residential part of the city, in general. Let’s just be glad that some billionaires are investing in public transport infrastructure.
It currently only serves buses, and it's going to be a long time until HSR comes in. But having caltrain connections and bart connections at the place would actually make it a decent transit center
Or even just a free shuttle between bart and the transit center
@@MacNCheeseUnicornbart station is like 5 mins walk away.
@@MacNCheeseUnicorn It's a three-block walk.
I'm not American nor ever been to San Francisco. But having a good connection to the local train service should be a must for a major intercity train station.
And no, free shuttle or subway is 3 blocks away is not good enough. Subway station should be right next to it. Anything apart from being able to walk in door from intercity train platform to subway platform is not acceptable.
But as I said, I didn't live nor been US. Maybe I don't understand how things work in US or SF.
@@punnboat9817 As San Franciscan, the probably isn't lack of connectivity. The problem with the station currently is that there is not a lot of reasons to go there.
Until Caltrain and HSR arrives, the only reasons to use the station are 1) cross bay busses (though most people would choose Bart), and 2) Greyhound/long distance busses.
A bit of a nitpick, but Grand Central Station does have a named sponsor, the New York Central Railroad. Not many people know about it though since the the New York Central is long gone.
they should update it to Sales Force Central Station
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593 WeWork Central Station sounds better imo
@@pleasedontwatchthese9593salesforce southern pacific transit center
And New York Penn Station is/was named for the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Initially it was only supposed to be called the Transbay Transit Center.
It’s frustrating that China can build and overbuild infrastructure in undeveloped areas and receive the benefit of the doubt from transit advocates, but CA tries to invest in one of their most developed areas and everyone starts losing their mind. SF is doing something big here, they already have half the funding needed for the downtown extension from the federal government. We just need to finish the damn CAHSR and everyone will forget the Salesforce Transit Center ever had problems.
well the difference is that China has proved they can pull off massive infrastructure projects time and time again, and every time California says they are going to do something it either gets canceled or it takes decades to build something that disappoints everyone
The station is in the wrong place lmao. It would have made more sense to build it where the BART and Commuter trains go, and just build a tram tunnel. Its like building an airport in manhattan. Wrong place
@@MsKateC2Kultimately I think the problem in the US is that while our approval and land acquisition process is very locally democratic, it’s profoundly *un* democratic at the macro level. If the vast majority of people vote for a subway on a certain alignment but it gets blocked because the tenants of one strip mall objects to the construction is that really democratic? I certainly don’t think so, but the tenants sure do and similar scenarios play out here in the states *all the time* at every stage of construction. Planners and contractors have no guarantees in a project so they have to bake in massive time and financial margins to compensate.
The ability of small actors to intervene needs to be curtailed for the US to accomplish anything close to China’s level of infrastructure development. Once a plan has been set and voted upon, it should be held sacred save for only egregious flaws. Citizens need to be made to understand that they can either have infrastructure or total immunity from potential adverse impacts - but not both. And certainly no more of this “yes we should build something but *only* if it’s not in my backyard” halfhearted bullshit
Umm, how is that working out for China? I agree the U.S. growth and maintenance of it’s infrastructure at all levels is a joke, per our nation’s standards that were set 70 years ago. But, China? Really??
@@andrewzheng4038 the land acquisition process is pretty democratic on all levels, just not revolutionary... that is, individual rights cannot be violated for an ideology, good or bad, any person has a right to his status-quo... to build a new type of transit oriented society one needs to incorporate a totally new community built around transit and which will be populated by likeminded people (this is actually doable on a scale like the US) - indeed, some of the biggest modern hubs in China and the Middle East are basically just that... modern supercities with little history and a lot of new ideas (look at Shenzhen as an ideal example of that)
fun fact: the long fountain in the park is in sync with the buses on the level below so that as buses move, the fountain activates directly above them.
What?! No way 🤯
I used this transbay center first time last year on a weekend and was shocked how dead it was.
As I understand it all of the bus connections are meant for work commuters. And ofc SF’s downtown was overly focused on work/office buildings + WFH has killed SF’s downtown. So the transbay center is pretty useless as is.
Need to revitalize downtown to be more mixed use and residential + add more transit and train connections to the rest of the Bay Area to make it a useful hub.
Maybe It's an Art installation? Or or Training for What if: [Insert movie here]
Maybe if san Francisco got rid of the homeless defecating outside more people would want to go there.
@@NoalFarstrider right.. we need a Don't poop in the streets Culture back
There’s five Muni lines that run from the terminal. And they’re now studying a subway line from the terminal as well.
Your comment reminds me of my recent sighting at the street level of the Balboa Bart station. Back in the days on any Saturday afternoon there would be hundreds of people transferring to and fro carpool, MUNI and BART. However that day at 4:00 there was zilch, nada, zero ppl at bus stop on both side of the street.
I live on Treasure Island. The only practical way to enter or exit is by driving or busing up and on ramp which leads directly to the Bay bridge.
Before the transit center my bus (muni 25) took the Fremont exit which is constantly jammed during downtown events. A 15 to 20 minute ride often took over an hour. With the bus bridge service is a LOT more consistent.
Moving the Greyhound and AC busses to the third floor freed up a lot of downtown real estate.
How much? Check out the park on the corner of Beale and Howard. 6 years ago that was all buses.
Transbay may not hit all the marks. The ones that does hit will probably be late and over budget. But it's done a lot of good for the city.
the island you live on is artificial and there’s nothing interesting on there
The naming is awkward, but then the Pennsylvania Railroad left Penn Stations all over the northeast...
...named after the railroad that ran at the station. Much less ridiculous than frickin "Salesforce Transit Center"
@@Friek555💯
@@Friek555 We should have Salesforce sponsor the railway too then :)
@@Friek555 they paid. every place can sell its naming rights. why can't the transit center? don't see the ridiculous point here
Got into an argument with a friend about Penn Station in Newark and Penn Station in NYC (he was convinced there was no way it was called Newark Penn Station)
As someone that lives here I just continue to call it the Transbay Terminal. But this definitely a cart before the horse project
It was a Transbay Terminal when the Key System ran trains over the Bay Bridge… but then that was killed and later replaced by a half assed invented here system called BART.
@@bffnnn private railroads failed across the US as cities started prioritizing cars. The railroads themselves abandoned rail service across the Bay Bridge to cut costs amid falling ridership.
It's more of a Transit Terminal anyway. I view transit centers as placeless isolated bus transfer areas with no services nearby.
I will raise your cart/horse with, "Which came first, a chicken or the egg."
As briefly as possible, the current transition center was conceived after the 1989 earthquake, when it became a priority to redevelop the South of Market neighborhood and re-invent the footprint of the former Embarcadero Freeway. It was totally conceivable that grade-separared infrastructure of the bus connection to the East Bay would be done away with. The transit center was preserved by selling development rights to Salesforce Tower's developer. The promise of a heavy rail tunnel is still ... mid. The current location was selected during Bay Bridge planning after (ironically) the 1906 earthquake. To be frank, this location is shockingly unsuitable.
Visionary thinkers should consider what would be the best location operationally. Let me suggest (boldly!) a location below the inevitable (over sufficient decades planning horizon) redeveloped ballpark at 3rd & King. Except, that would be more of a Penn Station of the West? A short subway shuttle under 2 Street--resembling the S-line under 42 Street, NYC, if you will--would pull it all together on the relatively cheap.
Extending from there north along the Embarcadero or to a new Bay Crossing would be much more feasible than the 1st/Mission location.
The park on top is really, really nice. Right now it's worth visiting for that alone.
No homeless on the benches? If no, then yes, worth a visit.
@@funkychicken2119 I've only been a couple times...once at midnight and once in the afternoon. It looks like they have pretty good security around the clock. Really don't think they're about to let the homeless take over. But we'll see.
@@funkychicken2119 No homeless because you have to enter the station and take the escalator or elevator up to the roof.. where there is security 24/7 because of the buildings that connect to offices and residents. There is definitely a feeling of being watched when you sit around because you can tell this is a heavily secured park.
Good god that's a terrible waste then. An elevated park? Would've been cheaper, easier, and less environmentally devastating than constructing a raised one. And that's all without accounting for the sheer waste of excavating and building proper tunnels and train stations underground...
@@skytron22 Yeah right now it is. Supposedly when the train lines are done it'll be more functional. If that ever happens.
The park upstairs is a great addition to the community.
You have ignored the primary reason this was rebuilt. The salesforce transit seater is a replacement to the old transbay bus station. The old bus station had a maze of freeway ramps that ate up a major portion of the land south of market in downtown SF. This maze of old freeway ramps consumed many blocks of downtown SF and was a massive waste of land. The replacement was developer driven to free up a vast amount of real estate, demolish the spaghetti maze of highways, for many of the new towers in SF. So the project is already a massive success as it replaces the original functionality of the old transit center, added a great park and allows construction over many blocks of new high rise towers. The extension of Caltrain/HSR and a standard rail link21 tunnel to the east bay will also vastly improve this transit center, and will be a major bonus No added BART tunnel is needed as you noted it is incompatible with standard gauge rail and has very limited and expensive expansion constraints.
Do you know where I could read more about this perspective?
Added fact. The old transbay bus station was originally a rail station for the old Key System rail that used the lower deck of the SF/Oakland bay bridge. The "maze of freeway ramps" were huge to accommodate the tuning radius of trains and used up a lot of land. As busses have a smaller tuning radius, the size of the connecting ramps were greatly reduced and allowed for redevelopment of area.
One thing unmentioned here is how the direct, bus-only connection to and from the Bay Bridge is such a big time saver. Bus riders coming from East Bay get to avoid heavy traffic getting off and on the bridge. It really does save a huge amount of time compared to the old surface street route where the bus would be stuck behind cars waiting to get on the bridge. Prior to this, you could easily sit on the bus waiting to get on the bridge for 15 or 20 minutes (just to go a few blocks!) if it was a bad traffic day. Now, the bus just has 1 simple merge with the bridge traffic, and that happens AFTER the surface street onramps that are the bottleneck.
At least Salesforce and San Fran share initials so you can just call it the SF Transit Centre
Yes been doing that except spelling it Center.
I may be alone inthis but what I find missing from the station is businesses. You called it an airport - airports have businesses inside, past the security line. I keep thinking of CDMX subway stations and how Cuauhtemoc, the central stop, has restaurants and clothing stores inside. Or La Raza, that has a full astronomy museum inside.
As is, the station feels sterile. I use it - the NL is convenient for me when going to the city - but I don’t look forward to spending time in it.
It seems like SF is where retail gets destroyed, so it’s kind of a lost cause until the city does more to protect the stores.
It does have businesses, he mentioned it in the beginning of the video.
As a San Franciscan, I've never stopped calling it the "Transbay Transit Center". I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
Not alone, I was born when they tore down the original
I work right down the street from here. Salesforce transit is a perfect example of my biggest gripes with American transit: everything is privatized and we never do things the “right way.” We shove billions of dollars for large projects that are like 80% of the way there, but leading to even more inefficiencies and cost down the road. The transit center will never connect to BART, at best one day there’ll be an extension but that’ll again cost a lot and require extra transfers. BART, Caltrain, Amtrak, and Muni metro are also different systems, require separate tickets and also actual transfers (paying again) within the same station🤦♂️ all of them together would be pretty solid coverage for SF and the bay, but alone it’s pitiful. The bus network is really good but only within certain areas, it’s not integrated throughout the Bay. You have muni, ac transit, golden gate transit etc. that all control different regions, it’s all just unecessary inefficiencies. Oh and of course bikes are owned by Lyft.
Long story short, it shouldn’t be just SF, just Oakland, just SJ, and separate slow inefficient connectors between them. If people wised up and started building for one integrated metropolitan area of the “Bay Area,” which in actuality it is, we could have so many cool projects. Heck there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be more frequent cross bay ferries, integrated with BART integrated with high speed rail etc etc. Agh what seems so obvious is just so frustrating out here.
How is everything privatized in what’s called “public transportation”?
I live really close to the transit center. I have (had) no idea what the point of this place is. I only discovered the plans for the Transbay as a hub for California HSR from this video. They should advertise this in the building!
They do have ads saying HSR is coming soon. I go to Fitness SF regularly and see the ads on the displays!
@@saawan162 "Soon" = 25+ years. LOL!
@@saawan162 I must have missed it or been paying too much attention to my phone. I go to the SF fitness at Transbay when the other locations are closed
@@davidjackson7281 haha I agree! I don't think it will happen anytime soon
@@LucasDimoveo Tbh, they are just showing that because they don't have any other ads to display. They mostly show the events in Salesforce Park and the HSR ad on their displays.
That "office building" in 5:28 is actually open to the public everyday btw (just the hall; anything beyond that is private property). There is a coffee shop inside, the sofa is comfortable, and there are security as well, but the wifi sucks from time to time. Nevertheless, it is some of the best (and well-hidden) places in the city to actually get your work done for a few hours. I like to have some noise in the background to not fall asleep, but sometimes a coffee shop in the city can get crowded and hence too noisy, and this spot hits the balance (util the coffee shop closes at 5 and people starts to leave).
the WiFi is absolutely atrocious lol but other than that it’s a really cool and hidden workspace spot
All buildings a certain size in SF are required to have POPS (privately owned public space). The park on top to the transit center is the salesforce tower's POPS.
The park is a total jewel for downtown San Francisco. The transit has been temporarily delayed due to Covid but will be welcomed as the cbd rebounds in the years to come.
cbd? what's that?
@@davidjackson7281 Central Business District
I doubt it will bounce back anytime soon…
@@davidjackson7281 central business district aka Downtown
You have to make the city safe first
Visited the terminal on a weekday afternoon; it felt like a beautiful but near-empty, expensive waste of space (at least for now). Hardly anyone inside. The 20-30 minutes of walking around, I think I saw ONE BUS pass by that giant bus level. And the departure board barely had anything listed for the whole day. However, the park on the top level was amazing and had a lot of people.
I live part-time in SF and different cities in Japan. So it's sad to see this terminal so empty and underused as all the stations in Japan are bustling and filled with people, shops, and transportation lines.
The old Transbay center was a dark, dank nightmare of a place. Tearing it down made way for the Salesforce Tower and other new buildings. The deal included the construction of a new Transbay center. If we had waited that property would have been developed as more office towers. I suspect that in the decades to come, we could see the center as a good investment. High Speed rail will eventually be built and the eletrification of CalTrain means that it will be possible to bring those trains forward into downtown. You could probably build underground tunnels with high spped walkways up to one of the MUNI/BART stations, much like you see in airports and connect the system that way. The park above the terminal is very nice and the city is encouraging more residential development downtown. The park would then be much busier and the terminal could become filled with a food court and maybe other types of entertainment.
an interesting piece of salesforce park: the seemingly random fountain along the walkway apparently (sometimes) reflects the real locations of buses on the lower level.
Juat because BART trains use wide gauge doesn't mean you need a separate tunnel. What you need is one wide tunnel and dual gauge tracks (with dual electrification systems obviously).
Precisely - dual-gauge tracks have been around about as long as railways have. Implementing it here would be the most practical option to get people moving via whatever means suits them best.
An issue with that is that BART's tracks actually have flat-topped rails instead of the usual rounded-topped rails; wheels have to be custom-built. This is the reason for the notorious loud squeal when BART trains go around curves, and part of the reason why the recent overhaul of the system has been so expensive. EDIT: Apparently they're working on rounding the rails, but I don't know how far along they are on the project.
@@andyjay729 Well you could build 4 separate rails, two flat and outside, two round topped and inside, so there's no actual shared rails.
Love the transit center. Its a great secret commute option from the Eastbay. Its crazy to think there's a giant basement that's completely closed off ready to go.
I'm not sure I'd call SF's station the Grand Central of the west when LA union, Seattle King St, San Diego's Santa Fe depot, Portland's Union Station, and San Jose Diridon station among others exist.
SF had a decent train terminal until it was erased in the 70s. And the only thing Diridon has going for it is that it is aesthetically competent. But they could keep the mural and erase the rest of that station without a loss. Oakland had a decent train station but that was abandoned when 880 was rebuilt and realigned. There is a lot of transit stupid in the Bay Area, especially the fixation with BART.
I don't get SF's station. Unlike the other stations, including LA's Union Station, Transbay doesn't connect to various transit lines, certainly existing ones.
@@gridley The mainline SF station, built and run by the Southern Pacific, was originally supposed to be located right downtown at the intersection of Market and Embarcadero across from the Ferry Building, but for some reason that never happened. Possible NIMBYism over a century ago? If only SP had made that decision back then, SF and CA wouldn't be having these issues today.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_and_Townsend_Depot#History
Is there a reason that BART can't use dual gauge track? Caltrain trains use a caternary and BART uses a third rail on one side. Dual gauge BART _and_ have a caternary for Caltrain trains, and both can travel along the tube. You would have more complicated portals and would have to deal with the different train control systems... but this sounds solvable?
Such a stupid location. It should have been built in front of the Ferry Building, which would have allowed BART, Muni Subway, and ferry connections, and they could have reinforced the Embarcadero Sea Wall at the same time. Sigh…
The fact that this doesn't connect with literally anything is just hilarious. Any time America spends money on transit, they just mess it up royally. It almost seems intentional.
This
you forgot the word "yet". America has always done this. The original railroads went to nowhere until they did. often, it was the train that put you on the map or took you off the map. development around the stations can now happen, and that's going to be decades in the making.
maybe it is not the best way, but it is the American way. transit is not a priority and will never be a priority for the federal government. so the fact the united states even bothers building any of it is actually a good thing.
@@cmdrls212 I mean, yeah, just go for it. I don't have any rights to give advice to americans where their tax money should go.
It's just the outside perspective makes it very funny to watch and observe. But yeah, at least California tries to do something...
@@cmdrls212 huh, this makes no sense. There's already tons of development in the area. They picked it because it was the old bus terminal. It's always going to be inefficient. Instead of building it where transit already was, they built it where they could.
I guess it kinda doesn't matter because of the nature of transit in the bay, SF is a pretty poor center. Diridon will play that role much better, as it already has a lot of connectivity throughout the bay. All it's missing is HSR and Bart, and it'll get HSR before the Transbay center will, and there's plans to bring Bart to it.
Yeah Seattle's massive Transit expansion is imploding due to cost overruns in planning. We are 8 years after the $54 billion vote approving it and now they have to go back to the drawing board since what was promised and planned can't be built for $54 billion!!!
The planned pedestrian tunnel to connect the Transit Center to Embarcadero Station that was eventually scrapped could of helped. Adding a moving walkway through the tunnel definitely would of helped.
What I’m seeing now is the quality of the transit center falling behind. The bathrooms look terrible and stink. More and more of the displays at the bus stops are out of service. And it seems security has allowed a few unhoused people to sit for hours when they weren’t allowing that before. Taking AC Transit to the transit center for me took longer than BART, but the atmosphere and quality of the transit center was why I choose it over BART. Now I usually just take BART because there’s no longer a difference in what I see🤷🏾♂️.
Yeah I was sort of guessing that a moving walkway would be defecated on constantly and lined by emcampments
A tunnel is a horrendous idea, it would have been a spot for homeless and drug addicts to congregate that was dry.
@@StevenTorrey That’s what security should of took care of, but if they’re relaxing on enforcing people to keep it moving then yes a tunnel would be a bad idea. Constant enforcement is the only way it would work in a tunnel, for example the Union Square/Market St Muni Station. We don’t allow people to stay too long, lay down, panhandle, or set up camp.
was the tunnel scrapped due to fear Millennium Tilting spread to other buildings?
@@rossr6616 No, it was a financial decision not to build the tunnel. If ridership ever picks up after trains arrive to the transit center, the tunnel can be looked at again as a possibility.
Today it is Salesforce Transit Center, When that company changes its mind about naming rights, it will become Acme Bank Transit Center. Then Giga Corp. Transit Center. Then Mega Trust Inc. Transit Center... Sigh.
The sports arena in downtown DC opened in 1997 and is now on its third name. That's a new name approximately every 5.5 years.
Fight the Power. Call it the SF Transit Center until someone pays YOU to call it something else.
Been doing that from the beginning.
I stayed a block away from that station this summer, and I had no idea all of that was there. The name "Salesforce transit center", especially right next to Salesforce tower, made me think it was just a random subway station, and maybe not all open to the public.
It was also totally empty, like most of downtown. Maybe it would have been easier for me to see the intended use, If there had been more people using it. The transit center might just be suffering from bad timing
4:30 That's my bus! It goes across the bay to Alameda Island and stops about 3 blocks from me.
With the ridiculous cost of public transit in California, I'm ok with a sponsor if it saves taxpayers $110 million
Except if that cost is DUE to the sponsors?
@@jakub.kubicekit wasn’t, though.
Tax them instead
@@Zoulstormwhy force them through tax when they are willing to sponsor?
@@schnetzator because then we dont need stupid names like "salesforce transit center", also it fixes the issue of the many megacorps not "sponsoring" their fair share.
The Salesforce TC was built right to the Transbay Terminal that it replaced. The location allows for easy access to Highway 80/101. It would be a nightmare to send all those buses through downtown at Rush Hours. The original Transbay Terminal was a train station.
We were a French group of tourists visiting San Francisco for the first time last month. We genuinely had no idea it was a transit center. Thought it was a very fancy overground park for Salesforce workers 😂 that said the park was very nice and the views were amazing especially during sunset.
Public transportation and infrastructure here is centuries behind Europe and Asia. This is nothing more than a vanity project. Blame lobbyists and politicians
This is just my opinion, but I think this transit center will look better than Grand Central Station in the near future when complete. It has, and will eventually have, certain things GCS won't. It's modern, it will eventually have Caltrain (electric trains), high-speed rail and it obviously has a cool rooftop park. In the original renderings, before it opened, they showed the station with many vendors - inside and outside the station. Once more people use the station in a few years, it will surely have a bunch of vendors that will liven up the place. Imagine local artists performing at the amphitheater. The renderings for the 2 lower levels look very modern. Do a search on RUclips for the full renderings of the train box. The RUclips channel for California High-Speed Rail Authority has videos showing what the completed station will look like.
Fun fact: the water fountain follows the bus that runs one level below.
Those green AC transit Transbay express buses are worth checking out. It's a dedicated rush hour spider map moving SF commuters to/from nearby communities. Before evening rush hour you can see about 12 of them empty at a traffic light arriving at the station. Commuters take the bus back home, getting off at frequent stops at handy locations in the smaller communities. Very handy.
Greyhound won't be in there for long. They've been dropping all their agreements with transit/intermodal stations that they don't own.
I went there last year, the roof top park rules. There's also coffee shops etc up there so you can sit and have lunch. So nice. I actually didn't know it was public because of the Salesforce sponsorship. Someone had to show me that it was public. The bus terminal reminds me of the light rail from SeaTac to downtown Seattle.
Small note: The Chase Center you just showed as a publicly funded stadium is actually a privately funded arena by Joe Lacob and the Warriors organization... no public government funds were used to build that arena
Thank you so much!
Such a great video. You’ve provided more information than the city & Salesforce has provided.
I’ve worked in the area for 20 years utilizing the trans bay terminal to access SF for both college and work. Commuting from Oakland via AC Transit is quick and perfect when we experienced heavier traffic, many moons ago.
The terminal was extremely busy! Once they redirected the buses to an outside parking lot a few blocks away, there was a huge decrease in ridership which has been further impacted by the pandemic.
I’m hoping what you’ve presented does happen as the terminal which once stood out is now hidden and underutilized.
Thank you again for sharing! You’ve got a new subscriber
The thing is a white elephant. Soon after it opened, it was closed for a year for structural repairs -- cracks were found in the structural beams. A bad omen. I fear that the building will be obsolete by the time (i.e., if) HSR or the Caltrain extension is built out (or there won't be any need for it, at least in downtown SF). A new transbay tube/tunnel? Not this century. And $6.7 billion for the tunnel from the current Caltrain station to the Transit Center? Given the huge cost overruns (and extra years) it took to build the Central Subway, doubling or tripling these cost estimates for the tunnel would seem prudent.
The tunnel's new guestimate is up to $8.2 Billion. This is a bad joke.
OR San Francisco should do what NYC did build a double deck tunnel. Subway on the top Heavy Rail on the bottom.
Great video wow and thank you for the 4K quality, it looks excellent quality 🎉🎉❤
I'm concerned that American transit planners are spending billions on highly localized vanity projects with limited utility. SF spent billions on this "train" station. NYC spent billions on the Oculus and WTC transit center. These stations look good and improve the rider experience in one place, but what if those billions of funding were spread out through the entire system to improve all stations and infrastructure? Nyc really needs it
Maybe Amtrak would have more nationwide support if it had more service outside of the Northeast Corridor, within 300 miles of Chicago, and California. The lack of direct service between the Midwest and Florida, between Dallas and Houston, and to Las Vegas are glaring omissions.
@@andyjay729there’s no money or willpower for that
@@mattkennedy6115 Sad thing about that is it would cost a lot less than an HST line or any vanity projects. Especially if America rediscovered D/EMUs like they use on most European and Japanese lines, especially in rural areas.
the Caltrain got major upgrades that start running tomorrow. there are also a couple new trams one or two of which are getting extensions
We‘ve just arrived for a three week project in SF from Switzerland and have been in the park every day this week except one. It’s really nice to have a place that clean in the Center of city. Probably my favourite place in SF. Hope it will stay the same for the next years, definitely worth the upkeep
Saying the transit center is "four blocks from Market Street" is rather disingenuous. It is 1.5 blocks away when not counting alleyway streets. It is more honest to say it is 800 feet from Market Street.
Yes it's much more honest to use actual well defined units of distance instead of obfuscating non-standard units like blocks.
As someone who no longer takes the BART to Sf (going under that bay scares me), I really appreciate being able to take the bus to the new, shiny transit center. Maybe that's not worth billions lol. I hope it becomes more accessible and useful in the future.
Honestly a waste on money. They should have waited until San Francisco Westfield died out than demolished that. Then you would already have trains served by BART and Muni at the underground Powell Street station below.
A lot of parallels can be drawn between this and the new Grand Central Station in Belfast, Ireland. It's just been opened and cost around £350m but currently only serves buses while they await the rail connection.
Frustratingly it doesn't link up with the current or future Belfast Bus Rapid Transit network, and passengers would have to walk a few blocks to connect between the two.
Additionally despite all of this cost there are no speed improvements on the Belfast to Dublin railway line, it is slower today than it was when it first opened in 1950! Would be incredibly interesting to get your thoughts on this project.
It looks nice over all but I have a huge gripe: can we please STOP with the soulless minimalist Apple Store wannabe architectural design trend please?
Yeah, old buildings are still the best places to be around
I like both classic design & the Mirrors Edge-esque, modern, "clean" design.
And I believe that modern, industrial design, should stay modern.
An Apple store is actually minimalist, this is just modern
@@wtfareperfectplaces Which means it'll probably look like a very dated product of the times 20 years from now.
@@spinlok3943and then will look classic 20 years from then. 😅
I'm actually going over to Salesforce Park for a co-working event today. It's a popular spot for outdoor meetups because the location is relatively central to everyone in the Bay, even with a four-block walk.
The building is promising, other than the structural issues. But we have some time to "wait and see" on that. In the 2010's the star when it came to Bay Area transit expansion was really the ferry system, but who knows, by the end of the decade we might have fleets of robobuses routed into Salesforce.
9:30 you can put two rail gauges in a single tunnel usisng a dual gauge track. I believe this solution is often used in Australia
I'm pretty sure it's not just corporate sponsorship. My understanding is that Sales Force was required to invest in the transit center in exchange for approval of their giant tower right next door. Maybe that investment was in the form of a 'naming right,' but it's very different from a corporation slapping their logo on something. In fact, it's more like canny negotiation by the city. This should have been pretty easy to figure out if you looked into the approval process 10+ years ago before either building was built.
Bruh imagine if Philly’s station was named “Comcast 30th street station” I’d hate that
Take the William Grey name off while you're at it.
i just discover this place exist yesterday and you made this video. amazing timing. i compare this to port authority more than grand central
You are certainly catching a snapshot in time. The fairest comparisons for the new *TransBay Terminal* are its original sketchy New Deal-era building (now demolished) and the temporary site that served bus commuters while the whole area was being rebuilt. That temp site will be redeveloped into more towers for offices and housing. So in comparison, you have to look at both ridership and land uses - there are way more residents in that area now than before, so the elevated park is as much an amenity to them as office workers. Eventually HSR and Caltrain will terminate in the TransBay building, and the relative distance to BART and the Central Subway are no worse than the current King St distance to the Transbay Terminal, and is comparable to distance between different-era transit nodes in London and Paris. Good enough is alright for now. If you are looking for a mega-transit center, consider what SJ Diridon and LA Union Station will offer.
"Eventually" is several decades from now.
@@davidjackson7281 : all infrastructure is incremental, even civilization resets will follow existing patterns.
@@davidjackson7281 : all infra is incremental.
I take that Amtrak bus on a weekly basis and always wondered why it picks up (blocking traffic) on busy Mission street instead of in the entirely empty and brand new Transit Center. Thanks for the info! Entirely infuriating and completely unsurprising.
If the money goes into subsidizing the center and not into someone's pocket, they can call it whatever they want for $100m. Eventually after it's been commonly used it will pickup is own nickname, no one is going to say, "I'm going to head to the SaleForce Transit Center" at the very least it'll become the STC or SFTC.
it is weird to name it after accounting software though
Extending Caltrain's terminus to this thing would likely help to drive more local tourism back to downtown SF, especially now that Caltrain is fully electrified and significantly upgraded its service.
Soon it will be Salesforce Bay and Salesforce City.
Still SFC so don't gimme no bammer weed.
SF... Initialism.
Might be Google Bay. Salesforce is small change comparatively.
@@mattbosley3531Isn’t Google moving most of their people out of S.F.?
dude! I worked a few blocks from this building for 3 years and only right now I am learning that this is a publicly accessible transit center. I always thought it was part of sales force tower due to the name and proximity . I went to the park sometimes and always thought I was “sneaking in”. only now I find out it was perfectly allowed! I would’ve gone way more often !
I will say one thing about the name: while I don’t like it, to be fair, most old train stations in the U.S. were named for the private rail company that operated it. Either that or they were “Union” stations if multiple companies built the station together.
I just call it SF Tower / SF Transit Center. Nobody has to know it doesn't mean San Francisco 😉
@@CheapFlashyLorisnice, keeping it under wraps 😄
this bus stop before transbay was so bad. felt dystopian and scary.
CAHSR will happen when our grandkids are old. It cost $3.3+ billion for LAX to build 2.25 miles for a people mover and it got delayed again until 2025. Construction started in 2019.
That project was headed by CAHSR's new CEO. How about that as an example of the Peter Principal?
cahsr has over 50 miles built already and this year it got full environmental study approval for the entire LA to SF route. all it needs is funding & the longer the funding takes to come the more it'll end up costing
@@jubeat4451 So when and where is the remaining $100 Billion needed going to come? Without such funding then environmental approvals aren't worth the paper they are written on. CAHSR is still $8-10 Billion short for the valley segment alone.
They should've started out with tilt-train lines along the current tracks between San Diego-LA-San Bernardino-Santa Barbara and San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland-Sacramento to get people acquainted with the notion and build up support, then started on dedicated HSR between those cities, THEN started to connect north and south.
@@davidjackson7281 cahsr is not short for the valley segment. they have enough cash for it.
@andyjay729 electrifying and tilting surfliner route is, to put it lightly, difficult. half the path oc-sd is two blocks from the beach. they should've started hsr with la-sd though, it would've been excellent and make flights and driving between them completely pointless. also electrifying caltrain is part of cahsr and it starts tomorrow, shaving 20 minutes off sf-sj
Living in San Francisco and commuting on public transportation to other cities of Bay Area I'd love to have Caltrain and Amtrak in the same spot as the buses that go to the Muir Woods direction. The park above is a really lovely spot as of right now, they have (or used to have?) free public events like morning yoga or storytimes for children, a cafe and a small playground for the children to unwind. Very good place for families who have to wait an hour between their connections, especially in the very busy downtown with almost non-existent kids-friendly spaces.
I worked at the top of the building across the east end of the building as it went up. Was very dull until the plants went in up top.
Running trains out the east towards a second bay tunnel will require knocking down several skyscrapers, but with development rights to rebuild on top taller should helm make it practical.
The Grand Central of the west is Los Angeles Union. One of the most beautiful and functional stations in the world. Genuinely stunning, they've filmed everything from the dark Knight to the Oscars there
For the connectivity to BART: Just built two moving walkways at 2nd floor level (or underground for that matter) at each end to Montgomery and Embarcadero station. It's 280m, that's not much for a high-speed to regional interchange (the train platform itself will probably be longer). Connect it to the adjacent buildings with shopping opportunities and you got some Tokyo grade interchange amenities.
To be fair, it is a 6 minute walk from the BART(and MUNI, too!) Embarcadero station to the salesforce transit center, so unless your so lazy that you can't walk 6 minutes, it isn't really the highest of our priority
You know people have disabilities and mobility issues?
My main gripe with the name is that names are important when it comes to transportation. Messing up naming can lead to confusion and delay (especially when the name of a transit center has an expiration date). Just ask anyone who's traveled around NYC and confused New York Penn Station with Newark Penn Station, which is only a stop or two away.
Who planned this thing? Transit Centers have to connect as many kinds of transit as possible, they should have built it on top of already existing train lines if they dont want to change their course.
It was built on top of the previous transit center
@@lucaspadilla4815 doesn’t make the location any better. It’s either that you will have subpar service because bus, local and highspeed train lines not being connected or you will have to connect them all in future creating extra cost that reduces all cost saving for building it there to zero or below.
@@alexejvornoskov6580 All of those will be here, but it will take time. The Portal project is just starting. That will get Caltrain here. Once the tunnels from the Central Valley get HSR to Gilroy and then San José, HSR will also be here. There are other projects: the pedestrian tunnel to BART, just a few blocks, and the second tunnel to Oakland, which will allow trains to continue to Sacramento.
@@danielcarroll3358 Yeah, for 8 billion dollars as estimated right now. More then it did cost to build the whole thing. And it will NOT be connected to existing Bart station, this plan was scrapped. So only chance of interconnection is if Bart builds a new tunnel on this route - which would mean that everyone traveling via it would have to switch trains on next station to reach other lines. Not exactly optimal solution.
@@lucaspadilla4815 it wasn't really a transit center, it was just a bus terminal.
I think Penn Station was named after the business that developed the station and it could be argued that the sale of the naming rights to justify development/operational costs would be as vital to the existential question of either transportation hubs
Better than the old bus station. That place was so worn down and had disgusting bathrooms.
I'm not familiar with the transit in the Bay Area nor know too much about BART. But I do believe a second tunnel should accomodate both BART trains and standard gauge service, either having one level of tunnel which has both track gauges running along together or two levels of the tunnel separating the services. I'd argue that it's important to include BART in a second tunnel as a form of redundancy for people using the service. But then you could argue that a second tunnel solely for other trains can be used too in the event the current BART tunnel needs maintenance or other form of work by having some way to facilitate riders between the services.
This transit center replaced the old one which was small, dark, and crowded. They intentionally wanted to make it larger than they needed to accommodate future expansion in transit service which the old transit center could not do. It was never built to be a train station. It was built to replace the old bus transit center with the ability to accommodate trains later when/if needed. It's a bus station first.
False. I used to use that building and it was very well lit because the sun would shine right in the giant open sides of it where the buses drove out on the second floor.
Sorry but you a so wrong. The original served passenger trains just as this replacement is intended to do "eventually". However the SF Transit Center will be atleast 25 years old before that ever happens. Atleast the unfortunate naming rights will have expired by then. Salesforce should be embarrassed and ashamed for naming an empty bus station.
@@davidjackson7281 those trains were removed in the 60s. Buses used their old ramps. I actually went to the building. What about you? How can I be wrong? Do you explain how I’m wrong when I actually went there and use the building multiple times.
@@davidjackson7281 they were electric streetcars anyway not passenger trains. The Key system and Sacramento Northern Railway.
@@Balthorium I am not disagreeing with you. l was responding to ShonnMorris' comment. The trains ran on the Bay Bridge into the Transbay Terminal from 1939--1958. l took busses there from the East Bay in the 60s and 70s and from the North Bay in the 80s.
The vibe of the people strolling along the paths in the park was overlooked as it was used by millennials from surrounding offices actually taking & discussing a variety of issues in groups of 2-6. It was the kind of interaction we want to encourage that would bring people to offices in the city.
In Denver, we have a 3-block stretch of similar dimensions at street level cut by traffic sewers, so the vibe sucks by comparison & the new plans don’t seem to encourage or support the kind of active discourse the salesforce park does. It may be underutilized, but they can’t build for pandemics when exiting a Great Recession!
Please consider doing a video on Radburn NJ. I heard you mention it during one of your videos and would like to hear more about it.
I wish the Caltrain extension to it would have started earlier. But it’s definitely not a waste. It’s a gorgeous oasis. There’s a redwood grove along the rooftop path too!
Weren't there plans for that when the original terminal was built in the '30s? And for that matter, wasn't the original railroad stopped where it was by 19th century NIMBYism? Would've solved the city (and state) so many problems and saved it so much money had the old Southern Pacific built just a few miles more into downtown.
IT SHOULD BE : " [Name of ] «Presented By» Salesforce"
TRANSBAY transit center.
@@Canleaf08 Yep.. Presented by Salesforce
The obvious thing (from someone only looking at it on google maps), would be to reroute the BART trains along 1st and 2nd street using mission street.
And the loop at the end of mission street could be extended towards the transit center and 1st street.
Welcome to San Francisco, sponsored by SalesForce (TM)
At first I was like: "Something that looks like a train station, but filled with buses, instead of trains?"
But then I remembered that this is in the US where they have a fetish by anything that goes in a asphalt road or any road in general as long as it doesn't have rails of any type... 😅
That’s the whole Americas sadly
Then stay away from Amurica which rules and the rest drools.
It's a common modern design for bus stations. I used to live in a British (now) city that has a smaller bus ststion with the same principle.
The problem here is the lack of connections. In the city I mentioned the ststion was connected to the train station.
But it is a (future) train station..... that was literally proven in the video...
@@Yvonne-Bella Are you patient enough to wait another 20+ years before trains arrive?
I read somewhere that they could theoretically add more platforms by digging up Mission/Howard street, however the skyscrapers on both sides complicate the process, and having trains turn from 2nd street onto those street make it really complicated to engineer and operate.
For the tunnel, both trains can operate with a mixed gauge. It's not uncommon around the world:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_gauge
I got my urban planning degree in 2018 and got the chance to do a deep dive into this project and the adjacent salesforce tower, and got to tour the then-construction sites. The Transbay Transit Center was planned very well. In the late 2010’s SF was growing at a very fast rate. Had SF kept growing at the same rate the city would’ve surpassed 1M people around 2021. Unfortunately the developers couldn’t predict COVID, the awful way the city handled the pandemic that led to Downtown SF emptying out, techies in downtown being replaced with homeless drug users, delays in the Caltrain extension and high speed rail, and the 20% population decline SF has experienced since 2020. I’m sure one day the transit center will function closely to how it was originally envisioned but it won’t be anytime soon.
The cracked beam and non-functional gondola are not good omens.
These numbers are not right. 20% population decline? Population in 2020 was 843,071. It's current population is well over 674,457, and it's population has been increasing the past couple years. And mishandling Covid? What should SF have done? It has among the lowest COVID death rates compared to every other metro center in the country. Yes downtown has lost a lot of business, but it has slowly been improving the past couple years. Please stop parroting Fox News talking points. If you like the city, you really are not helping by spreading misinformation.
SF voters and politicians can't seem to figure out if they want progress or hate progress. SF's problems are self-inflicted, and it's such a shame because some aspects of the city potentially make it literally the best city in the world. SF is like the mega jackpot lottery winner who ends up bankrupt ten years later.
Not all lines of buses go into the bldg plus I dunno why it’s called transit terminal when not everything is collectively in one place plus you got the homeless roaming and businesses leaving. Unless something has to change for the better good of the city
Thanks for covering this topic. California has a lot of big plans for transportation that will be transformative for the state. Given the complexity of these projects, moving forward on them is not easy. There has to be long-term thinking, but more short-term doing. Hopefully more federal funding is on the way after the elections.
Two transbay tubes? Yes Please. Both are needed.
Hopefully the Amtrak service tunnel gets priority, that rail style is way more common and could benefit way more types of trains
They desperately need to improve safety and cleanliness on BART. My daughter loved the convenience but stopped taking it because of that. Scary especially for young women.
CA Lawmakers must do better.
The DTX project is planned to extend CalTrain (and California HSR) to the terminal from King and Fourth, but the deadline for funding being found is not until 2027 so it is not moving fast. My dad (a Canadian engineer who has worked on major public transport tunnelling projects in Canada and Australia) is shocked how slow the project is, use to how Australian states and Canadian provinces will be like we'll do it and promptly arrange funding and the engineering design start immediately after.
If both the Link21 and second transbay BART tubes aren't built, which one is most likely to be?
I'm a simple man. I see anything to do with transit planning and I click. Nice job, San Francisco. Hopefully you'll grow into this transit hub in the future!
perhaps in 20+ years
You missed a point about the rooftop garden that's important to me--the landscaping. It features flora from Mediterranean regions around the world. Beautiful plants, fitting for the San Francisco climate, and a really neat theme.