When completed late next year, the currently under construction $2.7 billion Transbay Transit Center will sport hubs for eleven transportation systems, a patterned metal skin, and a rooftop park. It will also feature, as we learn today via the Chronicle, a "mini Bay Bridge."

The span, pictured above, will cost $22 million and is designed to connect the terminal directly to the Bay Bridge — allowing buses coming and going to skip downtown SF traffic and hop right on the Western Span. And while the resemblance to the new eastern span of the bridge is unmistakable, according to the Chron officials with the Transbay Joint Powers Authority balk at the paper's suggestion that it is "[like] a Las Vegas-style replica." Rather, they say “the look and color was intended to match the transit center.”

Besides, structurally, they tell us, it makes sense. Something needs to hold the new bridge up, and sunk pillars would have gotten in the way of future (possible) trains.

The mini-span, when completed, will be six blocks long. No word on what effect, if any, it will have on the nearby sinking Millennium Tower.

Related: Here's The 60-Story Tower Proposed For The Final 'Super-Tall' Transbay Parcel