Central Subway One Step Closer to Becoming a Reality

I can already hear the crinkling of pink plastic bags and the stampede of tiny little Chinese feet determined to mow over anyone who dare not let them on the train first.

I've stated it before and I'll state it again - the Central Subway is an abortion of bad transportation planning. BAD PLANNING. Behold:

1.) The Central Subway does not directly connect to any of the Market Street lines. People riding the T line need to get to work, not Union Square for greater shopping pleasure. Forcing commuters to walk underground for ten thousand miles to reach Powell Street station so they can take the train one to two stops to get to the Financial District is profoundly stupid.

2.) The Central Subway stops dead in the middle of Chinatown. How does this adequately serve the needs of people in North Beach, Russian Hill, or Telegraph Hill? It doesn't! If they're hellbent on constructing this epic retardation, they should take it all the way to Fisherman's Wharf. After all, this is really just another ride for tourists anyway (three stops - Moscone Center, Union Square, Chinatown).

3.) The Central Subway doesn't connect to the Transbay Terminal. Hrmmm. What's the point of the Transbay Terminal if HSR won't go there and none of our underground lines will connect to it? Why not bring in the Central Subway? Because the MTA is staffed by tards, that's why!

4.) 1.3 billion American dollars for a project that in no way will serve the needs of the people of this city is absurd. We need less rides for tourists and more N Judah cars! Think about how clean our sidewalks would be if we were to divvy up that 1.3 billion dollars to all the homeless youth in consideration for scraping up their turds off the sidewalk. I can think of a myriad of ways this kind of moola would improve the quality of life of people in this city. Alas, the Central Subway ain't one of them....

Wait-- they're adding a subway from Caltrain, and it STILL doesn't connect to BART?

At washington this thing is going to be several hundred feet underground. I predict getting down to the train station is going to be so painful that the little old ladies just stick to the 30 anyway.

They should make it connect to the rest of the system by building the new tunnel, then extending the N past the ballpark, north into the new tunnel, and under downtown to Chinatown. Then the lazy could have the option of riding the N all the way around the loop to and from Chinatown instead of having to climb between Upper Powell Station and Lower Powell Station.

Oh god this thing is so stupid. Just what our broke City/State/Country needs.

Can we call this one, "The Bigger Dig"?

but if the feds want to throw pork at us, then fine

No, not fine. The money from this comes from where, the magical cash fairy?

These criticisms fail to understand the transit realities and needs in this area. One need only experience the clusterf*cks that are the 30 and 45 lines to understand why the central subway is necessary.

To quickly address Angry Young Man's points.

1) People who would rather ride MUNI than walk the few blocks from the T-line station can switch to the N-line at 4th and King.

2) The Central Subway would serve North Beach residents who by reducing crowding and thus improving the efficiency of the 30 and 45 buses. Also, residents wanting a quicker ride and a little walk would also be well-served. Eventual expansions are possible, but trying to build those simultaneously could hold up the project for another decade or more.

3) Connecting to the Transbay Terminal is neither necessary nor particularly cost effective.

4) This line is not for tourists, and the bus lines it would supplement are not packed like sardines every day because of tourists. The F-line is for tourists--and masochists like me who are suckers for streetcars. This line would actually greatly benefit many SF residents, including some of the most underprivileged.

If you don't believe me, I suggest your go read SPUR's report on the Central Subway.

Enjoy!

At first, second, and third glance, this plan seems like an insane boondoggle.

Over a billion earmarked for a corridor that could likely be better-served in different ways? What? Who started this idea?

Does anyone (other than those who're gonna get paid for it) think that this is a legitimately good idea?

So this's gonna run on OS/2 also, yes?

@ 18 wallcloud: Connecting to the Transbay Terminal is neither necessary nor particularly cost effective

You're nuts. The whole point of the Transbay Terminal is that it will link Caltrain, the High Speed Rail line, MUNI, BART, everything. Why wouldn't you want to link them all?

There's been some talk about not extending high speed rail from 4th & King to Transbay. Spend the $1.3 billion to do that, where it would actually do some good.

I doubt it will be very useful for the many riders from Chinatown who go to Powell BART today, given how deep the Chinatown station will be, and how long the walk to Powell be also. Some will ride for sure, but I bet many stick with the surface buses because they will be faster door to door. And it will be a whole lot slower than the current 9X for trips from Chinatown to Visitacion Valley.

Extended to North Beach, however, it starts to make more sense. Riders from North Beach will save time taking the subway from Washington Square to Powell, so ridership will go way up compared to the current plan.

Now they just need to fix that horrid 4th and King intersection.

Hey, if it gets tourists out of those damn double decker sightseeing buses, it's all right by me!

@Wallclod:

A.) Does this include the fine citizens of Chinatown who may be trying to get from that colorful locale to downtown? Should they take the T down to 4th and King, change to the N, and the ride it back up to Market Street? Their other option is to get off at Union Square Station and then walk 100,000 miles through an underground tunnel that will start to smell like pee about 5 minutes after it opens to get to Powell Street. This does not represent an efficient means of moving humans from Point A to Point B. What it does represent is retardation.

B.) The Central Subway doesn’t go to North Beach; therefore, it doesn’t serve the people of that neglected district. While I would agree there may be a reduction in passenger loads on the 30 and 45 thanks to this atrocity, so what? Folks in North Beach get all the best seats already as they board the bus prior to the mobs of Cantonese grammaws clamoring to hop on at the corner of Vallejo and Stockton. Walking, while nice and a good form of exercise, is not an effective transportation alternative. They can walk now.

C.) What’s the point of building the so-called “Grand Central Terminal of the West” if no trains connect to the damned thing? Transportation hubs should be just that – HUBS! Being a terminus for the 38, 6, 5, and various Samtrans busses does not qualify. There must be a Muni rail connection there to bring travelers into the Financial District. That was the whole point of bringing Caltrain to downtown. Duh.

D.) Moscone Center to Union Square to Chinatown. This is another ride for tourists. They’re the only demographic not completely inconvenienced by this thing. Maybe trinket vendors on Grant Avenue…

E.) I like SPUR and proudly support them with my membership dues paid in American dollars. That does not mean, however, that their policy analyses are the direct word of Joseph Smith. Therefore, I can disagree with them. Sorry for you.

I don't think it's unreasonable to think that any major transit proposition not oriented around the Transbay Terminal should explain why.

"Not necessary" is not an explanation.

p.s.
As a frequent rider of the 30-Stockton - I can tell you with absolute certainty that the majority of riders get on at the corner of Columbus and Stockton and all along that corridor going south and they all exit at Market and 4th next to the Old Navy.

If we're going to dig, do the research. Hold open meetings and if the diggers are down there already, keep digging right up to Doyle Drive and end the congestion on Van Ness every damn weekend.

This is and always will be a big tourist town with an airport south of the city and the big destinations in the northern part of the city and points further north (wine country).

Does anyone in government pay any attention to that basic fact?

I agree with Angry Young Man 100%. I would love it if we had public transit that made sense. It seems everyone and their mother has something against the Transbay Terminal's board. I think if anything, we are going to end up not having a functioning Transbay Terminal, or if we do have one, all the public transit lines will finally be connected to it in about 50 to 100 years.

Early on in the discussions for the extension of the T up to Chinatown, North Beach, etc., there was a plan to take the proposed metro line up Kearny. I don't know why they nixed that idea. Certainly it wouldn't go to Union Square, but really? when you are at Powell street, you are essentially there already. If we are trying to alleviate traffic congestion, then it would make sense to take it up Kearny, right next to China Town, next to FiDi, and the beginning of North Beach.

I'm sorry, someone please tell me WHY we wouldn't all be in favor of a tourist-friendly public transit option?

There's less than a million people living in SF.

We get 6+ million tourists a year.

I'll wait while you do the math. That's a lot of money they can spend while they're here, if only they can conveniently get to where they need to be in order to spend the cash. Tourist money is the best money around too since it's almost entirely coming from ourside our own economy and therefore only has a positive effect. Everyone wants more tourists. Few places are willing to consider doing anything significant for them.

There's a new hotel slated to go up on King st, around a block from where the central subway should end. Coincidence? Nah. But realistically speaking, these people will be able to more greatly appreciate the ability to get around this place.

Don't tell me about busses, the average tourist that lives in a city where you have to have a car (%95 of them) doesn't have any idea how to navigate the bus system. Even if they know how, they don't want to. Instead they take a cab, which we don't have enough of, which still clog our streets.

I know the vast majority of people reading a SF-centric blog are all ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME types who say stupid things like "high speed rail to LA, WHY NOT FIX BART FIRST DURRRRRRRRRRRRR" as if a no vote on high speed rail to LA was a yes vote on fixing BART. Those are separate things, separate funds and if you want BART fixed you're going to have to bark up the right tree, not rail on anything that's good but doesn't quite meet your personal needs and demands.

And anyone whining about the money we don't have, the economy goes in cycles. In 10 years we'll be back to having a huge surplus and way more money than we know what to do with. In 20 years, we'll end up in a recession again. That's just kinda how things go. Just because most of you aren't old enough to have been an adult through the last recession with the Other Bush, doesn't mean it didn't happen and wasn't followed by a decade of amazing growth and wealth.

This line is a good thing. It's a good start. It needs to go further, but that's for later. Take care of the money (aka tourists!) and the city will hopefully have the cash to fund an extension like they did with the T-line after long enough. It's very shocking to most people who visit the city that there's not a north/south line and all the streetcars only go east/west for the most part. It's a fairly tourist-unfriendly system unless you're just going somewhere on Market. Public transit shouldn't only be about people who commute to work.

The same lobby that bullied Willie during the embarcadero and Gough street refurb is the same one pushing for this project.

My question is why do we have dueling transportation hubs? We have the one group pushing for the transbay terminal, and another pushing for the hub to be located at the caltrain station where the T, N and the Central line will meet at the Caltrain station.

But if it eventually connects northbeach and fisherman's warf to Union Square and the ballpark, wherever it terminates, why not?

@masterdave: I'm not opposed to a subway to Chinatown and beyond. I'm just opposed to THIS subway for the reasons I've stated. We can produce a much better subway line that meets the needs of the people who actually have to live in this city you think is an amusement park. Why not design a project that runs to the Transbay Terminal, connects directly to Montgomery Station, down Montgomery or Kearney, and then up Columbus Avenue to Fisherman's Wharf with stations at the end of Chinatown and in the middle of North Beach/foot of Russian Hill? This alternative was never even considered. Think about how much better a project that would be for the people who live and work here.

You have to keep in mind that this whole project started out as a political deal worked out between Willie Brown and the Chinatown merchants who were angered that we decided to trash the Embarcadero Freeway. Voters approved initial funding for this project with the understanding that the tunnel would have a spur down Geary Boulevard that would eventually carry LRVs down to the Richmond District. Even that might have made this project worthwhile. Alas, that idea was trashed and now we're developing BRT for Geary - in reality, a stop gap measure in the transportation planning world. The Central Subway is a waste of money. They need to go back to the drawing board and come back with something that isn't the mediocre fruit of bad compromises and left over political shenanigans.

san franciscans are always up in arms against tunnels; yet history shows that they work: http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hgtun.htm

Notable quotes from this article (written in 1949!)
-"Five years of frenzied geopolitik [sic] maneuvering among the assessment districts preceded the emergence of the Stockton Tunnel; 8 years of the same preluded opening of the Twin Peaks Tunnel, and 10 years of haggling preceded what headlines gradually came to call, not too ambiguously, the "Big Duboce Bore.""
-"But that's nothing. Eighty-five years of false starts led up to last year's $5,000,000 bond election for the project Broadway Tunnel (Abner Doble, who later made steam automobiles, had planned to build the tunnel in 1863.)"

Ban Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything!!! (BANANAs)