Trolley Tuesday 5/25/21 - The San Francisco Transbay Terminal

Hello, dear readers and passengers! If you are reading this post, chances are I'm suffering the side-effects of my second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. As always, I want to tell you all to please remain healthy and safe as the country returns to normal, and be smart with your health.

Now with that out of the way... San Francisco's Salesforce Transit Center is a rather polarizing building in the city's history. Despite being designed as an ultramodern multi-modal hub for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Muni's bus system, and the northern terminal of the eventual California High Speed Rail (CAHSR), the building has had a shaky construction and opening as it spent most of its first year in operation closed due to structural concerns. While many new transit advocates both support the Salesforce Transit Center, or denigrate its organic architecture, almost all old San Franciscan souls lament the loss of what was there before, the original San Francisco Transbay Terminal. Despite being one of the most modern buildings in the city when it opened in 1939, the loss of its three major commuter rail tenants rendered the building redundant in only 20 years and limping into the 21st Century. On today's Trolley Tuesday, let's look at the history of a building way ahead of its time, but quickly left behind once the trolleys stopped running.

It's Like a Ferry Terminal, but for Streetcars

In this 1915 photo, double-ended SP ferries meet with Sacramento River sternwheelers at the Ferry Building.
This stunning industrial view was later smothered by the infamous Embarcadero Freeway in the 1960s.
(Hensolt SEAONC Legacy Project)

Ferries swarm around the pillars and pylons of the under-construction
SF-Oakland Bay Bridge in the early 1930s. The Ferry Building is bottom-left.
(Wikimapia)

Prior to the opening of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (also known as the Emperor Norton Bridge to more urbane fellows), the only useful way to get across San Francisco bay was aboard a ferry boat. It was a lucrative business as well, as railroads like the Southern Pacific (SP), Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe (ATSF), the Western Pacific (WP), and the Key System all had ferries at some point taking people between Oakland, Richmond, Vallejo and the Ferry Building. Ferry-mania was just as big as railroad-mania, and at their height in the 1920s, hundreds of ferries were plying the waters of San Francisco Bay. Many of these ferries, which connected with street railways on both sides of the bay, ended up unceremoniously redundant in 1936 with the opening of the Bay Bridge.

The Key System's ferry terminal in Oakland.
(Unknown author)

With the aforementioned opening came the opportunity for direct rail service into San Francisco through its lower deck. For quite some time, men like Key System owner Francis Marion Smith dreamed of having direct rail access into the city by an underwater tunnel (more on that later) but an overhead bridge was close enough. In order to accommodate these new railroads, a brand-new transit hub was planned by the city to consolidate three trans-bay interurban railroads as well as the Market Street Railway of San Francisco and the Greyhound bus lines, with a planned commuter throughput of 60,000 passengers a day and 35 million people annually. If San Francisco was going to build the biggest, baddest train station in the Western USA, they were definitely going to build it in style.

A Moderne Terminal for a Modern Train Service

An original cross-section of the planned SF Transbay Terminal, with an outdoor courtyard for
a streetcar loop and six interurban tracks for the three interurban railways.
(Transbay Joint Powers Authority)

Timothy L. Pfeugler in 1936, considered
the architect of modern San Francisco.
(Fair Use)

As it was the late 1930s, art deco was still the rage all over the world with its clean geometric lines and sleek profiles. The Transbay Terminal was no different, as architect and industrial designer Timothy Ludwig Pflueger (1892-1946) was brought in to design the new building. His design called for a sleek, "streamline moderne" edifice made of concrete with enormous steel window frames and glass allowing plenty of natural light, unimpeded by tall skyscrapers. Inside, the interior was as grand as Grand Central Station in New York City, with a cocktail bar known as the "Cuddles Bar" being set up to give weary travelers a reprieve at the end of their day. Adjacent to the Cuddles Bar was the Harvey's Diner, part of the Fred Harvey chain of restaurants and one of a few not located near an ATSF railway line, which served nourishing breakfasts, lunches, and dinners to commuters. Other concessions included a barber shop, a shoeshine place, and convenience stores. 

An overhead digram of the tracks at the Transbay Terminal, consisting of a double-track loop off the Bay Bridge.
(Transbay Joint Powers Authority)

450 Sutter Street's main edifice, as designed by Pflueger.
(450 Sutter Street)

For Pflueger, designing this station was a breeze considering his massive curriculum vitae included buildings like the Castro Theater from 1922, Pacific Bell building from 1925, 450 Sutter Street from 1929, and the eventual Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939-1940. However, unlike those buildings, the city wanted the Transbay Terminal building to be constructed on a budget of about $2.3 million dollars ($43 million in 2021) with most of that going to construction of the railway tracks, and so some concessions like a low ground-floor ceiling had to be implemented. After a contractor was secured in June 1937, groundbreaking at 425 Mission Street commenced on July 29 and the building was soon erected on January 12, 1938. Later that same year, on September 23, the first test trains began running across the Bay Bridge and into the Transbay with the Key System's new "Bridge Units" rendering the new service, with Governor Frank Merriam at the helm. 

The Key System officially heralds a change in Bay Area rapid transit
with its first test train to the Transbay on January 23, 1938.
(FoundSF)

An interior view of the interurban tracks at the Transbay,
featuring the IER at left, Sacramento Northern at center, and
another SN train on the Key System tracks on the far right. 
(Amikoj on Reddit)

In order to accommodate the 600V DC Key System as well as the 1200V DC Interurban Electric Railway (IER, formerly SP East Bay Electric) and the Sacramento Northern (SN), the Key System ran on an electrified 600V third rail while the two bigger interurbans used a 1200V DC overhead wire. Train control was handled by a custom electric switchboard with special cluster-light signaling within the trains, which was considered more sophisticated and simultaneously much easier than an old mechanical system. In order to furnish the trains for transbay service, all three interurbans sold some of their rolling stock to the State Roll Bridge Authority, who paid the interurbans back to retrofit their cars. 

The Tenants Don't Linger

Hundreds of people crowd the courtyard of the Transbay Terminal on opening day, 1939.
(SFMTA Photo Archive)

It's rush hour on the Key System in 1939 at riders
pack the center-entrances of the Bridge Units.
(SFMTA Photo Archive)

After months of testing, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Electric Railway Terminal Building (or the Transbay Terminal for short) was formally dedicated on January 14, 1939. Management of the terminal was turned over to the SN, IER and Key System by Lieutenant Governor Ellis E. Patterson and the first public trains began running on January 16, 1939. Derailments and service delays were quite common, as IER and Key System trains kept coming off on the switches in and out of the station; this was due to the check rails being unable to keep the cars from derailing at low speeds when entering and exiting the terminal. This often happened during rush hour too, leading to significant delays, until it was finally fixed a couple months later by adding switch-frog guides. 

Though no passenger numbers existed after this point, judging by the many rush hour photos, it was no surprise that the Transbay Terminal served its useful purpose during the first year of its operation. Oddly enough, however, despite being an all-in-all transit hub for the city of San Francisco, no attempt was ever made to connect the building to the SP Third and Townsend depot further south, leading to a significant gap between East Bay interurbans and the heavy-rail Peninsula Commute.

The IER's "3" train departs the Transbay Terminal in April 1939, bound for Berkeley via Shattuck Ave.
(FoundSF) 

On July 20, 1953, a single car No. 162 waits at a
lightly-populated Transbay platform.
(FoundSF)

And then the trouble started. On February 26, 1940, the IER filed a motion to abandon their system to the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), citing a lack of support from their parent company (SP) and the cities of Oakland and Alameda. IER trains stopped running completely on July 25, 1941, including into the Transbay. The Sacramento Northern followed suit that same year as only less than 1% of their rail traffic was actually going into San Francisco, preferring to focus on their operations closer to Sacramento and Suisun City. With only the Key System now operating services out of the Transbay Terminal, they were able to hit peak service in 1945 with 37.3 million passengers rolling through due to World War II gas rationing despite the terminal only operating at 1/3rd capacity. After the Key System was purchased by National City Lines (NCL) in 1946, they began petitioning the Public Utilities Commission to end their tenancy in the Transbay Terminal in 1953, with them finally succeeding in 1955. The last Transbay Terminal train crossed the Bay Bridge on April 20, 1958, seventeen years after the IER and SN ended and only 20 years since the Key System began running test trains into the Transbay. 

And the place got quiet real, real fast.

A 1958 photo following the end of Key System railway operations, showing the Terminal's Western end.
(Unknown Author)

Terminal Velocity

What do you do with a train station that no longer has any trains? Simple. You open a bus depot.

An AC Transit bus arrives on the now-deserted platforms of the Transbay Terminal, 1960.
(Local News Matters)

The Transbay Terminal's exterior in 1978, now ruled by buses.
(SFMTA Photo Archive)

Immediately following the exit of the Key System, the people managing the Transbay Terminal (including AC Transit, Key System's publicly-owned successor) began conversion for reopening next year. All of the tracks were pulled and the upper level became a bus terminal for Muni, AC Transit, and Greyhound, while the original access line on the lower level and out of the Bay Bridge were converted into a paved off-ramp. The new Transbay Terminal opened for road use on July 12, 1959 and other service connections were added through the 1960s to keep the property viable. Even Amtrak began running buses from the Transbay Terminal to Oakland's 16th Street Station in 1974 to connect with their Oakland-terminal trains until Jack London Square opened in 1995. However, this new period of bus service for the Transbay Terminal was similarly short-lived, as the Bay Area Rapid Transit's new Transbay Tube opened in 1974 and many East Bay denizens preferred the more-direct rail service to the Embarcadero via Market Street rather than having to go through the Transbay on a bus. With less and less people riding the buses, many of the concessions closed and soon the homeless and destitute began calling the Transbay Terminal "home".

The empty waiting room of the old Transbay Terminal, what was once home to many seeking refuge from the city streets.
(The Window Seat)

The Transbay Terminal in 2008, featuring a Muni bendy-bus
and trolley bus. Remnants of the trolley loop can be seen on the lower left.
(Binksternet)

By the 1990s, the once proud Transbay Terminal was a blight on San Francisco. Most of the building remained closed and even the bus terminal above was down to a trickle. More services were actually moving outside, as Muni trolley buses encroached on the outside of the building on what was once the Market Street and Muni streetcar loop (which was also used for the San Francisco Historic Trolley Festivals of the 1980s). The area around Mission Street also fell into severe disrepair, becoming a "skid row" that was neglected in the wake of the BART and the Muni Metro both routing up Market Street direct from the Ferry Building. Despite the presence of historical societies who gave tours of the now-decrepit building and wanted to see it saved, there was just no escaping that the Transbay Transit Terminal, a place long removed from its original purpose, had to go. In August 2010, 72 years after the Transbay was opened, its death warrants were signed by AC Transit and the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (better known as Caltrain). The last bus left the Transbay on August 7, 2010 and by September 7, 2011, the beautiful art moderne building was gone.

Goodbye, Transbay Terminal.
(Timothy Pfeugler Blog)

The New Transbay Terminal...Opens?

A conceptual cutaway of the new Salesforce Transit Center, featuring connections
to the California High Speed Rail and Caltrain on the very bottom.
How they will deal with the diesel locomotive exhaust, I do not know.
(Greenroofs.com)

Replacing the Transbay Terminal was a "Temporary Transbay Terminal", a bus platform complex across Mission Street on what was once the original outdoor bus station. The road that was once the bus road into the Transbay was now the offramp onto Fremont Street, while the new facility was located two blocks northwest of the original Transbay Terminal, blocked by Beale, Howard, and Main Street in the South of Market. 

The interior lobby of the Salesforce Transit Center.
(San Francisco Chronicle)

Despite the new building being known as the "Transbay Transit Center" during construction, naming rights were purchased by Salesforce.com to become the "Salesforce Transit Center". The new terminal was designed to be as green and integrated as possible, combining a 5.4 acre city park and a multi-modal transit center that included AC Transit, Greyhound, Muni, and connections to BART and Muni Metro via a pedestrian tunnel as well as proposed heavy-rail commuter connections from Caltrain via 4th and King Street station (their current terminal). Its most striking feature was the outer aluminum "skin" designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, which certainly leant it is "organic" looks, while inside the insides featured retail space, food hall, and a Greyhound waiting room.

The outer aluminum skin of the Salesforce Transit Center, with the supports that caused so much trouble.
(San Francisco Chronicle)

The "Temporary Transbay Terminal", basically a bus parking lot.
(The Business Journals)

However, despite the futurism and forward-planning demonstrated by the building's owners and designers, the new Transbay was not without fault. Immediately after opening its first phase on August 12, 2018, the building was closed on September 25 following discovery of cracks in the building's support beams. All transit was handled by the Temporary Transbay Terminal for the next year until April 2019, when it was discovered that the support cracks were caused by improper welding and negligent inspection of said cracks. After a year of remaining closed, the Salesforce Transit Center was reopened to the public. The fate of the Temporary Transbay Terminal remains hanging in the balance, as during 2018, it was planned that it was to be converted into an affordable housing project. Currently, phase two of the Salesforce Transit Center involves extension of the Caltrain line (once electrified) into the Center's lowest levels, a pedestrian tunnel to connect to the nearby Muni Metro/BART Embarcadero station, as well as connecting it eventually to the California High Speed Rail project once that gains traction.

A contemporary map of the new Transbay Terminal, with the old alignment following the
"Fremont Street Offramp" to the "Temporary Bus Terminals".
(Socketsite)

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included the Timothy Pflueger Blog,  "Red Trains in the East Bay" by Robert S. Ford and Jim Walker of Interurbans Publishing, "The Key System" by Harre W. Demoro, The Transbay Center, and the archives of KeyRailPix.org, the SFMTA Photo Library, and the other resources credited in the captions. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by myself and can be found under “Motorman Reymond’s Railroad Gif Carhouse”, while the BART gifs are made by Alex Stroshane. On Thursday, there may be an episode on the Sacramento Northern, but I'm not so sure considering I may still be a little sick. For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!