Only in San Francisco.. 18 Million Dollars for a Temp Bus Station

[Dave]

Should be no shock that in the home district of Nancy Pelosi that they would spend so much for a temporary bus station that is basically a few metal sheds and a bunch of tent like structures.... and no bathrooms. Most of the bus station complex is open air, should be fun when its raining.

Some contractor made out like a bandit getting a sweet deal and of course the sheeple of San Francisco got a pretty and hugely over priced bus station. I can't believe that what they got cost $18 million... i'd expect much more for that chunk of change... specially considering the no bathroom thing. Oh, the reason for no bathrooms is because of security... they didn't want the homeless people a couple blocks away coming over and hanging out around the bathrooms. The obvious answer to that would of been taking some of that $18 million and building the homeless people a bathroom over where they tend to live at a few blocks away.

There will be a new permanent bus station starting construction in the spring. It is planned to be opened in 2017 at a cost of at least nearly a billion dollars and could have a final cost of up to $8 Billion for the entire project (includes new rail tracks and possible high speed rail tracks) assuming that there are not cost overruns... which we all know there will be. It appears that the new bus station wont simply just be a new transit station, but the base of a series of new skyscrapers that will surround it.

Along with the new terminal, thirteen towers have been proposed on sites around the new terminal, ranging from 300 feet (91 m) to 1,200 feet (366 m) tall.^[2] If built out to fund the construction of the new terminal, San Francisco will have a new tallest building and its skyline will be altered. 2,600 new homes (35 percent of which will be affordable), 3,000,000 square feet (280,000 m²) of new office and commercial space and 100,000 square feet (9,300 m²) of retail are planned as well . City officials have decided to consider rezoning the area around the new terminal, and will analyze the potential to raise existing height limits (550 ft. (170 m) max) upward, with the possibility of three towers exceeding 1,000 ft. (300 m) in height. On December 21, 2006, Renzo Piano proposed a five tower complex of one 600 foot (180 m) tower, two 900 foot (275 m) towers and two 1,200 foot (370 m) towers.^[3] Other towers are under construction nearby on Rincon Hill and at Millennium Tower (301 Mission Street).

Serious issues exist with regard to conforming with emergency post earthquake transportation planning guidelines and placing massive amounts of building materials and glass directly above a major transit hub and its road and rail connections. In a March 21, 2008 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the author, David Perlman speaks of "the danger to lifelines – the roads, rail tracks and bridges that must carry ambulances, fire trucks and fleeing cars after the quake; the airports that are bound to be unusable". The article quotes "Keith Knudsen of the national nonprofit Earthquake Engineering Research Institute" on the special civil engineering needs of the area: " the downtown area south of Market, where well-engineered high-rises are rapidly filling the neighborhoods, would be particularly dangerous in a major quake because the low-lying filled land there is subject to liquefaction. Those new buildings might well remain standing in the coming Hayward quake, he said, "but if the streets there settle by a couple of feet, those buildings will be isolated."^[4]

The new terminal its self will be of course green as you would expect from anything that the tree huggers would propose. The big feature of the transit station will be that there will be a park on top of the station. An artist rendering has it looking like this:

Its all pretty and stuff, probably the thing I would question is where are people going to park... assuming of course they don't come to the park via the bus.

Anyhow, If I ever went to California, I just don't know if I would even bother going to San Francisco.. I just got a feeling I'd be leaving that town shaking my head at the level of stupidity I would most likely see.

[Lisa O'Brien]

 

It does add up.

$4.5 million for the structures, mostly to house Greyhound.

-- $2.2 million for power and lighting.

-- $2 million for paving and sidewalks.

-- $1.5 million for canopies.

Toss in furniture, signage, traffic signals and a few other extras, and it adds up to a very expensive bus stop.

[XLFD]

Is all of this construction you noted publicly funded, Dave? 

I can't imagine any private investor foolish enough to hop on board. 

[AQUAMAN]

Nice find Dave, wonder how much favors and kickbacks the ole gal got from this White Elephant? Kinda sounds like the Feds. plans for Atlanta,  the $45Mil. trolley car system of transportation granted from the reinvestment act.