Four calendars, one project
The Portal extends Caltrain from Fourth and King Streets into the Salesforce Transit Center. The planned construction length is approximately 2.2 miles and the line connects 11 transit systems. The Transit Center station carries six tracks and three center platforms. The Caltrain terminus sits over a mile from downtown.
The TJPA's September 2026 monthly status report publishes four streams with dates: funding, design, procurement and property. Each stream moves on its own schedule. An operator can read each one without committing capital.
Funding: a board action already taken
The San Francisco County Transportation Authority closed its FY 2026-27 Prop L allocation for the project. The allocation passed the SFCTA board on second reading on 15 September 2026. That action completes the money line for the current fiscal year.
The status report files the allocation under completed finance work and carries no dollar figure for it. Read the amount off the authority's own board item before a rate model uses it.
Design: three packages at 60 percent, three at 30
Utility relocation, the Fourth and King yard preparation and building demolition stand at 60 percent design. Each advances to 90 percent after award of an engineering and design services contract. Civil and tunnel, track and rail systems, and station fit-out stand at 30 percent.
A design percentage names a stage. The report pairs each percentage with the contract that moves it, and the procurement calendar carries the dates.
Procurement: the civil and tunnel ladder
The civil and tunnel progressive design-build request for proposals went out in December 2025. Ten addenda are published and proposals are due 9 October 2026. The highest-scoring proposer is notified on 6 November 2026. The contract award is scheduled for 11 February 2027.
Proposers have filed approximately 155 requests for clarification. This stream holds the only hard dates inside the next four months.
Property: five parcels in tranche one
The boundary survey is complete and the Record of Survey sits with San Francisco Public Works for a first round of edits. Tranche one covers five parcels. Four appraisals are complete and two offers have been tendered. One appraisal package awaits the FTA's concurrence on value. The remaining stages run to Q2 2027.
The interests being acquired are property, permanent subsurface easements, temporary construction easements and rock dowel interests. An owner on Townsend or Second Street learns from these dates when an instrument reaches the parcel.
The service date and the movement behind it
The forecast target for ready-for-service is 17 November 2036, with no change from the previous period. The date was originally set at June 2035. The project has consumed approximately 16 months beyond the maximum modelled schedule contingency, and the cost contingency remains untouched.
The span between the original date and the current one is the figure a demand forecast has to carry.
What an operator does with four streams
Price the record. Three dates sit inside the coming months: proposals on 9 October 2026, proposer notification on 6 November 2026, contract award on 11 February 2027. Two sit further out: the Full Funding Grant Agreement target of July 2027 and the tranche one close in Q2 2027.
Set the review meeting against those dates. Build the base case on the terminus that runs today at Fourth and King. Hold capital until the grant agreement executes, and rerun the numbers when one of the five dates moves.