The Powell Street station is in jeopardy of being damaged because of lax planning by engineers working on the Central Subway project, according to a BART board member.

The $1.3 billion, four-stop Central Subway would connect Little Hollywood and Visitacion Valley with Union Square and Chinatown by 2016. To lay tracks for it, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency must dig underneath Powell Street station to within six feet of it. Construction is slated to begin in two years.

BART board member and longtime Central Subway opponent Tom Radulovich said the draft environmental impact report released last year did not adequately address the problems inherent with displacing groundwater during construction. He said digging underneath the Powell Street station could cause damage to the BART stop and possibly cause it to sink or collapse.

Radulovich said he remembers the lesson of BART’s Peninsula extension, the construction of which caused the Tanforan Mall parking structure to sag and spawned a successful $27.5 million lawsuit against the transit agency. He does not want to see a repeat at the Powell Street BART station, he said.

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He said is also worried that the influx of Central Subway travelers who will transfer at the busy Powell Street Station may present a fire hazard and that current turnstiles will be unable to accommodate them. The station already handles 28,000 BART passengers each day.

“I’ve seen a lot of large capital projects and a lot of transit projects planned,” he said. “And I’d say this is one of the worst-planned that I’ve seen.”

The final environmental impact report on the project will be heard at the Aug. 7 Planning Commission meeting. A series of environmental concerns first raised last year by BART because of the Central Subway project are expected to be discussed.

Those issues came to light Dec. 10, when BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger wrote a letter to SFMTA detailing concerns about effects on passenger safety, groundwater, BART service and asbestos abatement.

BART spokesman Linton Johnson said Monday that SFMTA had been responsive to BART’s concerns and that subsequent meetings had been productive.

MTA spokesman Judson True said the raising of concerns and back-and-forth between the two agencies is part of the normal review process and represent technical issues currently being addressed.

Nevertheless, Radulovich says his worries remain.

“The official story is that they’ll address our concerns in the final EIR,” he said. “Whether they’ll address them to everyone’s satisfaction, I don’t know.”

tbarak@sfexaminer.com

Upgrades to strengthen system

A facelift for the busy Powell Street BART station and a seismic upgrade for the Church Street Muni station are poised to begin, though train service will not be interrupted, transit officials said.

Last week, BART’s board awarded a contract to San Francisco-based Fibrwrap Construction Inc. to begin strengthening the columns in the Church Street Muni station, which is owned by BART.

The project is the first major construction work that riders will see after passing a bond four years ago to strengthen the system for a massive temblor, BART spokesman Linton Johnson said. To date, most of the $1.3 billion project has focused on retrofitting the Transbay Tube.

In addition, BART will embark on a $36 million remodeling project to spruce up Powell Street station, as well as the Ashby, Union City and Pleasant Hill stops.

Preliminary recommendations at the downtown San Francisco station include modernizing the Market Street entrances, removing partitions at the southwest entrance, improving lighting and security-camera systems, making trash cans more accessible and making the trackway more visible, Johnson said.

The initial $36 million project is part of a larger, $400 million station modernization plan that will eventually affect all 43 BART stations. — Tamara Barak Aparton