If you ask a group of people if they want to see a giant concrete box, you’ll get mixed enthusiasm. But for self-professed transportation nerds affiliated with the UC Berkeley Transportation Graduate Students Organizing Committee (TRANSOC), it was a learning experience punctuated with enthusiastic exclamations during a recent tour of the Train Box under the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco.
“I was expecting a gigantic concrete box and I got a gigantic concrete box, and I think it's going to look incredible,” TRANSOC Co-President Jacob Champlin (MS/MCP) told KALW reporter. “I love the light source here that we're looking in front of. I think that's amazing artistic work, and I'm glad that they're trying to think about as many things as possible when designing this entire concourse.
Champlin was one of 25 UC Berkeley TRANSOC students in the master's and PhD programs from Civil and Environmental Engineering and City and Regional Planning on a recent tour hosted by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which owns and oversees the Transit Center
They explored the someday terminal, which is 60 feet below the Salesforce Transit Center. It’s a pre-constructed, four-story high, third of a mile long space that will one day be the Bay Area terminus for the California High Speed Rail and Caltrain’s extension past Fourth & King streets. The train box is designed to house six trains—four from Caltrain and two from high-speed rail.
For students, being able to see how a significant investment that will ultimately connect 11 transit systems from the Bay Area and Southern California, and how a network of partnerships is working together to modernize rail in the Bay Area, was an inspiring experience.
“Stepping into the train box under the Salesforce Transit Center was an amazing experience,” said TRANSOC Co-President Ameen DaCosta (MS/MCP), co-president of TRANSOC,told the TJPA. “It showed the scale of this project and how important high-speed rail will be to the future of transportation throughout California.”
And it makes them think differently about their studies and transit in their communities, especially for Yvette Torres, Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering PhD student, from the Inland Empire in San Bernardino County.
“There's rail all over me, warehouses, ports, and not any public transit. So being in an area where there's a lot of public transit, it's really amazing,” Torres told the KALW reporter. “And I hope in my work to bring more transit and electrify those fossil fuel industries, and create work that is sustainable for folks.”
Listen to the KALW story here: https://www.kalw.org/2025-06-16/san-franciscos-ready-made-future-train-portal