Fremont Street Reopening Delayed As Crews Finish Transit Center Shoring

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- The reopening date for the closed portion of Fremont Street in downtown San Francisco, located underneath the Salesforce Transit Center bus deck where two cracked steel beams were discovered last month, has been pushed back.

The Transbay Joint Power Authority announced today that Fremont Street between Howard and Mission streets will reopen to traffic and pedestrians next week, on Oct. 17, instead of Friday, the original planned reopening date.

Although shoring on the ground level of Fremont Street is done, the installation of a four-story shoring system won't be finished until next week.

"It is important that we have an extremely robust shoring system to ensure that all levels of the transit center are safe and secure. Unfortunately, this requires us to keep the street closed until this work is complete. We will reopen Fremont Street as soon as safely possible and apologize for the ongoing impact to the public," Mark Zabaneh, the TJPA's executive director, said in a statement.

According to the TJPA, the shoring system will help beef up support for the bus deck. Once that's in place, engineers can safely go into the bus deck to inspect the cracked beams, which run parallel, and determine a cause.

TJPA officials said last week that they were hoping to find a cause for the cracks by early November. Once that's determined, engineers can then begin working on permanent repairs.

Last week, the TJPA employed nighttime closures on First Street between Howard and Mission streets, where a similarly configured bus deck runs above the street, for further shoring work.

TJPA officials said Wednesday the shoring work on First Street is mostly complete, but at least one more nighttime closure will be needed, set for an undetermined day next week between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.

Although no cracks were located in the bus deck above First Street, TJPA officials said it will nonetheless also be permanently reinforced.

The $2.2 billion transit center, which opened in August as a regional bus depot with future plans to connect it to Caltrain and the state's high-speed rail line, closed abruptly after workers discovered the cracks on Sept. 25.

Buses are now operating from the Temporary Transbay Terminal at Howard and Main streets in San Francisco, where they operated from before the new transit center opened.

© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. and Bay City News Service. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.