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SF's Fremont Street closed until next week as Salesforce Transit Center delays continue

Published  October 11, 2018 5:49pm PDT
News
KTVU FOX 2

SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) - Thursday the Transbay Joint Powers Authority talked about the timeline on the work to reopen the Salesforce Transbay Transit Center, why they pushed back the date to reopen Fremont Street, and how they're going to go about getting a permanent fix in place.

Work continues round the clock, first, shore up the Salesforce Transbay Transit Center, and then to put a permanent fix in place.

During TJPA’s update on progress, Mark Zabaneh explained why crews had to push back the reopening date for Fremont Street to next Wednesday. "This is due to complexities of the shoring system that we're designing. It's a two phase system, we finished one phase, we're working on the second phase right now," he said.

Crews have already been using magnetic particle testing to look inside the cracked steel. Crews have determined that a similar structure over First Street is not compromised so they will put minimal additional bracing there.

Meanwhile, crews will have to wait to pull samples from the damaged steel above Fremont Street until it is shored up. Basically what that means is they won't know what they're dealing with until they can get those samples back.

Engineers are already working on three or four different plans, getting ready to roll them out depending on what the more detailed analysis reveals. "The idea is to do the work ahead of time, to come up with some concepts, so that when the results come out we can implement them right away," said Zabaneh.

Ed Reiskin, head of the city's municipal transportation agency, says Fremont Street's closure continues to cause delays, especially during the morning commute. "Having that closed it's diverting all that traffic at Folsom Street, it has ripple effects through that part of town, particularly in the a.m. peak," said Reiskin.

The authority is estimating reopening Fremont Street in the middle of next week and says they're still on schedule to have a permanent fix in place by the end of the year.