In the middle of downtown San Francisco stands a multibillion-dollar transit terminal designed to eventually welcome commuter and high-speed trains. There’s just one extraordinary problem: years after the building opened, no trains can reach it.
The Salesforce Transit Center opened in 2018 as a major regional bus hub, complete with a rooftop park and an enormous underground “train box” reserved for future rail service. But connecting that space to Caltrain requires a new underground extension from the existing rail line more than a mile away—and that project, now known as The Portal, carries a multibillion-dollar price tag of its own.
The result is one of America’s strangest transportation stories: a spectacular rail-ready terminal waiting for the railroad to catch up with it. From an empty underground station and an expensive tunnel plan to structural cracks that temporarily closed the entire complex, here’s how San Francisco ended up with a $2.3 billion transit center that still doesn’t have trains.
The grand design without any tracks
Deep beneath the streets lies a massive, two-level concrete shell that cost $728.5 million. It’s about four stories high and stretches for nearly four blocks. This subterranean structure, known as the “train box,” was custom-built to hold six trains at once.…