No date to fix SF transit terminal as Clipper kiosks return to temporary site

A supportive structure sits underneath cracked beams inside the bus deck of the Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco, Calif. Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018. A supportive structure sits underneath cracked beams inside the bus deck of the Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco, Calif. Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018. Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 32 Caption Close No date to fix SF transit terminal as Clipper kiosks return to temporary site 1 / 32 Back to Gallery

No one is saying anything official, but the Metropolitan Transportation Commission this week made a move that indicates repairing the cracked support beams at the new, $2.2 billion Transbay Transit Center could take a lot longer than initially thought.

“We have no fixed date,” MTC spokesman Randy Rentschler said of completing the fix.

With no date on the horizon, MTC is reinstalling the Clipper card kiosks that were pulled out of the Temporary Transbay Terminal at Howard and Beale streets when the new center opened in August.

The four kiosks were torn out because it was thought that the Howard Street yard would no longer be needed.

But when cracks were found in two of the new terminal’s major support beams just six weeks after the building’s ribbon cutting, the temporary terminal was reopened.

“Frankly, at first we didn’t want to spend the money putting the kiosks back for what might have been just a couple of weeks,” Rentschler said.

But as September rolled into October and then November, the estimated 14,000 bus riders who use the Howard Street terminal daily began complaining about the inability to add money to their Clipper cards.

So, this week the kiosks are going back in, at a cost of about $20,000.

Meanwhile, over at the new transit center, the analysis of the beams (initially expected to be done by mid-November) is still in the works. Engineers are reportedly closing in of the cause of the cracks, with all indications being that the problem is in the beams and not the design of the center itself.

Once the analysis is done, engineers will still need to come up with a fix — then get that repair reviewed and approved by a group of outside engineers. Then comes the work itself.

“We are eager to reopen the transit center, but we have to balance that with doing all of the necessary work ... so that when we open, the public has full confidence in the center,” said Transbay spokeswoman Christine Falvey.

Falvey said the Transbay Joint Powers Authority fully intends to recoup all costs from “the party responsible” for the cracked beams.

“We do not yet have a full accounting of the scope of the cost of this closure, but we expect it to be significant,” Falvey said.

You can bet on that.

Testing, testing: A radioactive deck marker from an old ship that was uncovered near a new residential development at the old Hunters Point Shipyard didn’t pose a health hazard to residents — or anyone else, according to a new state inspection report.

“The amount of radiation output by this deck marker (0.09 mrem per hour) would not have resulted in a health or safety hazard to anyone who happened to be at that spot,” the California Department of Public Health wrote in a Nov. 16 report.

The radium deck marker — a silver-dollar-sized, glowing disk meant to keep sailers from falling overboard in the dark — was unearthed in September on a grassy slope near a row of newly built condos at the shipyard. The discovery of the radioactive material heightened residents’ concerns about the quality of the Navy’s cleanup of the site.

The federal government has spent $600 million cleaning up the 500-acre Superfund site, where 1,200 units of housing and millions of square feet of commercial space and hundreds of acres of parks are planned.

However, in recent years, claims of widespread fraud and abuse in the cleanup have surfaced, leading to a $27 billion class action lawsuit filed in May by Bayview residents against cleanup contractor Tetra Tech and the shipyard’s developers, Lennar and FivePoint.

The charges prompted state officials to go back and rescan the area known as Parcel A where the first homes have already been built. The followup included removing and checking the dirt from an undeveloped area where the deck marker was found buried under about 10 inches of soil.

Another 88 traces of radiation discovered in the area were “found to be potassium-40, a substance found throughout nature, including in plants, animals, various foods and our bodies ... and is not a health or safety concern for people or the environment,” the report said.

Not that everyone is convinced by the findings.

Daniel Hirsch, the retired director of the Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at UC Santa Cruz, said the deck marker was emitting the equivalent of “400 chest X-rays per year,” and raised questions about “what else is there that could be found if there were real testing.”

The scan should make people “more, not less worried,” Hirsch said.

The health department stands by its testing and tells us a person would have to sit on the spot where the marker was found “continually for 15 hours to receive the same dose” as a single dental X-ray.

Meanwhile, the Navy is expected to announce a retesting plan for Parcel G — the next piece of land scheduled to be turned over to the city for redevelopment — to ensure it was properly cleaned.

Bahama break: Between touring the state’s wildfire damage and heading to Mexico City to attend the swearing-in of new President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom spent the Thanksgiving holiday with his family in the exclusive Bakers Bay Golf & Ocean Club in the Bahamas.

A reader reports Newsom was spotted tooling around the grounds on a bicycle.

Newsom’s father-in-law, money manager Ken Siebel, owns a home at the resort, and Gavin and his family have been guests there for years.

The soon-to-be-governor said, “Yes. Had a shortened four days there with kids after a three-year campaign.”

And before starting his new four-year job.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross