October 4th, 2018
Mr. Steve Heminger
Executive Director
Metropolitan Transportation Commission
Bay Area Metro Center
375 Beale Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
Dear Executive Director Heminger,
We write you today to express our continued concern over the situation at the Transbay Transit Center and
to call on your agency to assist in evaluating the cause of the cracked beams and the plans to make repairs.
The Transbay Transit Center provides a crucial transportation link between our two cities. Once high-speed
rail and Caltrain are brought to the terminal, it will be the transportation hub for our entire region. The
Transit Center is too important to the future and the people of the Bay Area for there to be any uncertainty
around its structural soundness.
There are many questions about what might have caused the beams to crack, who might be responsible,
and how the beams will be repaired so that the Transit Center can reopen to the public. These questions
must be answered quickly and the public needs to trust the answers.
We understand that the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA) is conducting its own analysis on the
failures in order to develop a plan to make necessary repairs and we encourage that process to continue
expeditiously. But we also believe that it is critical to the constituents of our cities and our region that
there be confidence in the findings of that analysis. We believe that the only way to ensure this public
confidence is by engaging an outside firm to review and verify any findings, and for this peer review to be
managed by and produced for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
We respectfully urge the MTC to engage an outside firm as quickly as possible so that we can get down to
the bottom of what happened with these beams, feel confident that the problem is isolated, and make the
necessary repairs so that the Transbay Transit Center can serve the people of the Bay Area once again.
Sincerely,

London N. Breed
Mayor, City and County of San Francisco

Libby Schaaf
Mayor, City of Oakland