Downtown Rail Extension

The Downtown Rail Extension project will extend Caltrain and future California High-Speed Rail service from the existing 4th and King railyard to the newly constructed Salesforce Transit Center. The project will construct a new station at 4th and Townsend streets and bring rail service to the underground train station that was built as part of the construction of Salesforce Transit Center. The Transbay Joint Powers Authority is responsible for the Downtown Rail Extension project. In 2019, the Transportation Authority Board accepted the final report of an expert Peer Review Panel, which was convened to conduct an assessment of the project’s governance, oversight, funding, and delivery strategy. In 2020, the Transportation Authority led development of a six-agency memorandum of understanding to implement most of the recommendations of the Peer Review Panel and to support the Transbay Joint Powers Authority in advancing the Project to ready-for-procurement status. The Downtown Rail Extension project will be designed to connect to a future project to continue a tunneled alignment south from 4th and Townsend along Pennsylvania Avenue. This future project, known as the Pennsylvania Avenue Extension, will avoid conflicts with 16th Street, a major east-west travel corridor serving Mission Bay. This route was also endorsed by Mayor London Breed following completion of the San Francisco Planning Department’s Railyard Alignment and Benefits Study. The Transportation Authority is currently leading conceptual design study work for the Pennsylvania Avenue Extension.

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