Powell Street Station, the third busiest in the BART system, is not just a hectic commuter subway stop. For many tourists, shoppers and day-trippers, it’s where they arrive in San Francisco, their first impression.

But over the past few years, repairs and aging have conspired to give the station a decidedly less welcoming appearance for regular riders and visitors. Despite somewhat successful efforts to clean the station more frequently, and keep vagrants and panhandlers from sleeping in its corridors, it retains a gritty and disorienting feel.

“At its worst, it looks like an unsupervised construction site,” said Nick Josefowitz, a San Francisco BART director.

Help is, finally, on the way. BART planners completed a report on how to modernize the station, which sees the most traffic of the agency’s 45 stops on Saturdays and Sundays. The study recommends $94 million in improvements over time, though BART plans to start with a more modest $30 million to $40 million of work.

Tom Radulovich, a San Francisco BART director who works blocks from the station, said the work, focusing first on the entrance near Hallidie Plaza and then near the Stockton Street entry, should make the space more pleasant and less cluttered and congested.

“It will be a much easier station to move through,” he said. “It will be a lot cleaner and brighter.”

In recent years, the defining feature of Powell Street Station has been something that’s not there: the ceiling.

Multiple flaws

Thanks to still-uncompleted work to stop leaks and remove asbestos, riders are greeted by a missing ceiling and a mass of exposed beams, pipes and wires sprayed with a sickly blue, cottage-cheesy layer of fireproofing. The work began in 2011 and was supposed to be completed in 2012.

But that’s not the only flaw. The escalators and elevators often reek of urine and feces — or are inoperable. The lighting is too bright in some places and too dark in others with a makeshift combination of fixtures.

It can also be a confusing and congested place. The main entrance off Hallidie Plaza is crowded with an island of ticket machines, making it difficult for customers to find their way through the maze of walls and barriers.

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The first improvements BART riders should see include a new ceiling and LED lighting on the concourse level, relocation of the four-sided bank of ticket machines at the Hallidie Plaza entrance, a new glass wall at the southwest entrance, and escalator and elevator improvements. All of those projects are expected to go out to bid in 2016.

Also in the first batch of improvements — scheduled to be completed by 2018 — are a new suspended metal grate-like ceiling. BART plans to improve the lighting and well-worn flooring on the platform level, install new seating for riders waiting for trains and erect fare evasion barriers.

New elevators, canopies

In conjunction with the expected arrival of the Central Subway in early 2019, a new elevator will be installed near the lobby. Powell is also scheduled to be one of the stations where BART and San Francisco will test canopies over Market Street escalators — an effort to protect the moving staircases from the elements and from people using them for bathrooms when the stations are closed.

A second set of projects, not yet scheduled but expected to cost $7.4 million, would reopen the restrooms, install sound absorbers at the platform level, create in-station bicycle parking and alter some of the walls and barriers to make it easier to navigate the station. A new public address system and improvements to phone and Wi-Fi connectivity are also planned.

The report, with its $94 million list of improvements, represents more of a long-term vision than a to-do list. Among the desired items are platform screen doors like those on airport people movers, which keep people from falling or jumping on the tracks and increase a station’s capacity.

New stairways between the platform and concourse are on the list, as are a larger elevator and a new corridor through the station to Cyril Magnin Street. The report also discusses possibly replacing the system’s ventilation system, which hasn’t been used since the early 1980s.

BART will move ahead with the rest of the improvements as money becomes available.

The goal, Josefowitz said, is to improve the experience for both commuters and tourists, and to modernize the equipment, some of it now more than 40 years old.

“A lot of what BART built in the ’70s doesn’t work today,” he said. “We need to fix it not only for passengers but for easier and better maintenance.”

Art, information displays

The improvements at Powell will also include artwork and better maps, signs and transit information displays, while BART does away with some of the concourse-level advertising displays. Another possibility: adding retail shops to the station.

Ryan Sookhoo, 37, a clean energy engineer from Toronto, pronounced the station “OK” last week as he waited for a train to San Francisco International Airport at the end of a business trip. He said it lacked a sense of place: photographs, displays and information about what’s in the area.

“As far as aesthetics, it could use a little help,” he said. “It’s very basic.”

Alan Parkinson, 32, a tech company CEO from London, said the station showed its age both in looks and technology.

“It’s slightly dated,” he said, singling out the fare machines and gates as antiquated. London’s Tube allows riders to tap a credit or ATM card to get past the fare gates.

But to Dean Johnson, a former New Yorker just arrived from Las Vegas for a quick weekend visit, the station, with its wide opening to Hallidie Plaza, was acceptable.

“It’s welcoming, somewhat,” he said. “It’s a lot better than New York.”

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan