Roland LebrunSFCTA

October 2012Item #7 or #9

Chair Campos and members of the Board, good morning and thank you for the opportunity.

I strongly support the Caltrain downtown extension but I am addressing you today to share concerns over the $2.5B cost estimate and the substantial construction impacts of DTX south of Market and on Second street in particular, specifically the construction of a massive cut and cover tunnel 50 feet wide and 60 feet deep with 3 sharp bends requiring significant property takes.

I strongly believe that there are better solutions such as a twin-bore tunnel under the Central Subway similar to the London to Paris high-speed tunnels running under London's Central line east of Stratford International.

There would be no surface impacts in SOMA other than the portal construction within the existing Caltrain right-of-way south of Townsend and a potential intervention shaft in the vicinity of Columbia Square.

A major barrier to this proposal is the current train box design which is not deep enough to enable access via tunnel boring machines in a dense urban environment. The only solution is to extend the train box another 40 feet down to a depth of 100 feet between Second and Fremont (for the time being) at a cost of $500M including the cost of the twin-bore tunnel.

Last week, the TJPA approved package TG06 which would drive 1,800 micropiles starting at 60 feet below the surface thereby closing the last door left open to tunnel boring machines and condemning the people of San Francisco to the full $2.5B DTX price tag.

I urge you to stop production micropiling immediately while we evaluate alternatives such as revisiting the 2009 3-level train box concept, with a big difference this time around, because we would be saving $2B instead of wasting an additional $1B on the current DTX alignment.

In closing, I believe that the $2B saving would be sufficient to connect Transbay to the east Bay, thereby turning the terminal into a through station capable of handling in excess of 100,000 passengers/day as demonstrated during the 2012 Summer Olympics (with only 4 platforms).

I also believe that the economic impact of delivering a 10-minute connection between Transbay and the east Bay would far outweigh the $2B investment while providing relief to the existing BART Transbay tube.

Once this is complete, there should be no need for the shallow platform level required by the current DTX design and the entire level could be turned over to commercial tenants.

Thank you.