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Day Around the Bay
Oh boy. Here we go.
Tonight, City Visions Radio on KALW will chat about the Central Subway, its pros and cons. Naturally, the Central Subway is a super nifty project. (Because progress is building stuff, and building stuff is the FUTURE! No matter what!) Tonight's show will focus on San Francisco's plan to build a subway linking Chinatown with the new Third Street light rail. The $1.5 billion project would also link the Caltrain terminal at 4th and King with Chinatown.
Guests discussing the heated transit topic will be San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency's John Funghi, project manager for the Central Subway; David Schonbrunn, president of Transdef and a member of Save Muni, the organization opposed to the central subway plan; and, Andrew Sullivan, chair of Rescue Muni, "a riders’ advocacy and watchdog group."
But with the Muni budget shoved in the crapper, is the Central Subway worth the cost? (Sure, why not.) Will enough passengers take the Chinatown subway to make it worth anyone's while? (If the 30-Stockton could be any indication, yes.) Would some sort of Geary subway make more sense? (Duh.) These questions and more will be bandied about on 97.1 at 7 p.m.
Also, City Visions Radio would love your participation during the show. Please call 415-841-4134 to voice your golden nuggets of wisdom on the air.
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Would some sort of Geary subway make more sense? (Duh.)
Agreed. We have enough transportation options for downtown, but getting from one end of the city to the other is still a huge pain in the ass - or rather, just very very time consuming.
Central subway: yes
Current central subway plan: no fucking way
The current plan has NO CONNECTION POINT to the current subway. It's just not a serious plan.
Yes it does: Powell Street BART station.
The thing that makes this plan worthwhile is that it's designed for easy extension to North Beach. Really, North Beach should be included NOW as it would probably double the ridership.
I completely agree with you, because right now, North Beach seems so ... distant. I KNOW you can hop the 30 or w/e to get there, but still. With the influx of tourists, it also seems logical to link things and make it easier to get around.
The connection at Union Square/Market/Powell will be horrible. Read the plan once.
Um, no.
This plan has NO connection to the Powell Street station. Read the plans.
All the people whining about the Powell/Union Square transfer point have probably never ridden a subway in another city (e.g. Paris, Moscow) in their life. Some of the connections in those cities make the future Powell/Union Square correspondence look trivial by comparison.
@Robin Absolutely. The transfer b/t central subway and market subway is no worse than walking from one end of Van Ness to the other to catch a train. People need to quit their freaking whining.
Would some sort of Geary subway make more sense?
Would some sort of Geary subway make more sense?
Would some sort of Geary subway make more sense?
(I figure if it gets repeated often enough, it'll sink in.)
Would some sort of Geary subway make more sense?
Would some sort of Geary subway make more sense?
Would some sort of Geary subway make more sense?
You're damn right it would. Time to support the BRT program with a true rail-ready design, so that in the future when a Geary subway is designed and funded, it won't be necessary to rip out all that has already been built.
if we have the hole making machine in the ground then we should make it go all the way to the beach!
But I'm sure that would cost eleventy billion dollars and everyone thinks we're broke, so, sfgate commentors would not approve.
Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out why they keep calling this the CENTRAL subway. What's it the center of? I guess it's between the Embarcadero and Nob Hill, so it might be 'central' if you think the FiDi is the whole city.
A Geary subway would get my vote.
Yeah, maybe if it ran under Divis or Fillmore it would be "central".
A Divisadero subway is something I can get behind, for purely parochial reasons.
1.5 billion for a metro that goes 1.8 miles lets see thats close to 9500 feet which is $157,894.73 a foot
Now I have some land in Florida ro sell the morons who think this is a good way to spend money
This project is simply to appease Chinatown on a 20 year old promise from Willie Brown.
Make Stockton St transit only at a fraction of the cost.
This will be so sweet once we build it so that people can take it to the Caltrain station! Of course, by the time this boondoggle is done, we will be ready to start the next boondoggle and move the Caltrain station to the transbay terminal!
That's a really good point. We need more ways to connect to Caltrain. I'm in favor of the line.
I think the point is, we're building a line to the current station while simultaneously discussing moving the station to a new location a mile away.
If this subway actually connected say, the Sunset (N and L trains) to Chinatown, it would have INCREDIBLE ridership. Like crush-load. Instead, it connects to the Bayview, and has a transfer that's arguably worse than the current 30 Stockton one.
Furthermore even giving it the less-than-desirable routing, it goes super deep bore to go under BART, when the smart design would be to run it through the Powell mezzanine so you can do a transfer right at Powell(and maybe raise Market St a foot or two if you have to do so to make it fit.) The tunnel doesn't have to be as high as the current ones because they can use a ceiling-mount third rail instead of a catenary wire.
Central Subway? Yes.
Why? Because I would use it every single work day and probably once on the weekend.
Geary? I look at it like this. If you're going to move out to the avenues, you might as well just go ahead and move down the peninsula where it's sunny. Then you can use the Central Subway when you get off CalTrain.
your douche is showing.
The feds are funding this project, and since the fed has their fingers in it, we'd better go along for the ride. The less we delay, the more chance we can get the North Beach subway station in as part of the construction. Yes, this project could be done better, yes it is going to take a long time, but if we don't accept the federal funding, it'll go to another project, probably in another state.
Yes, Geary subway or geary rail is a better use of this money, but like I said, it's the feds who are calling the shots, not the citizens of San Francisco.
Wow, a reasoned well thought out response!
Thanks pdx6!
Yes why is the subway going to Washington and not under Geary to Van Ness where it would come to the surface and continue west for about the same money? Where is the need and where is the ridership? Without the politics which direction should the Central subway go, or does it need to go in both directions? If there is a need for both directions then there must be a junction built into the line when built or at a minimum a future junction must not be precluded.
Could there be a Powel Station with escalators and elevators going up from the Central subway station to the BART and Muni stations?
Washington Street is the central point of Chinatown, more people patronize the current stop at Jackson/Washington than any other stop, and it's convenient, located right between the 1 and 12 stops, though an extension to North Beach and running it on 3RD STREET would be nice, so it won't have to be THAT SHALLOW and allow a BETTER TRANSFER CONNECTION with the Market Street Subway...
The previous Third Street design was far worse, with FOUR right angle turns required on a northbound journey.
General concept: good.
Wrong route. It needs to go downtown, not to the Metreon. If it ended at the soon-to-be Transbay Terminal, at 1st Street, people in North Beach could take it to work. But it's the wrong location.
(Yes, the feds are paying to build it. But we'll be paying to run it.)
(And no, it does NOT connect at Powell. Yes, it should, but it doesn't.)
All of this whining and no talk about how little capacity is going to be designed into the central subway? One car trains every 10+ minutes? LOL. 90 degree turn at Market St? LOL! Going through 4th & King? LOL.
What a waste.
If you can't walk 1/4mi take a taxi.
@Zippy:
Correct! Even we build this incredibly expensive wasteful project that doesn't go the right direction, the expected benefits proportionate to the costs won't add up. It'll be slower than the bus, harder to get to than the bus, won't serve many people.
(Yes, the 30 is crowded. Instead of wasting billions here, we should spend them elsewhere and buy a few more buses for the line.)
I'm definitely in the camp of folks who believe there are better ways to spend $1.5 billion in transit infrastructure in San Francisco's downtown area. That being said, there is a whole new community springing up in Mission Bay and a new women's/children's hospital and UCSF Mission Bay ... so beyond getting back and forth to the destinations in North Beach, there's also the stuff in Mission Bay that is bringing people into areas where few people (save a house boat or ten) have lived in the past.
thank you j. there's probably 10k more people in this neighborhood than we had 10 years ago, and we'll have another 10k by the time this is working.
Hey, Brock, isn't it "yea or nay?"
Like I said, if they could just dig a damn connection so that Market St. subway trains could merge with it, they'd have a bazillion riders riding from the Sunset to Chinatown and back.
A very little tunnel for a great deal of money. Consider that the line could be kept on Fourth and Stockton Streets, and then run all the way to North Beach, plus a junction into Geary St and run west to the terminal, for less than the tunnel would cost. Even do one branch, and add the other later if money is not all available at the start. Replacing the current buses on Stockton and Geary would be operationally a financial gain - large capacity streetcars or LRVs - whatever you like to call them - are far cheaper to run than small capacity buses for the same demand. (Plus more comfort and greater speed.) And a surface line could link to the Market Street surface route, enabling a direct service from the Ferry Terminal, or West Portal, to Chinatown. Not to mention Geary St via 4th to the Ferry Terminal! A surface route wins hands down. Forget the Central Subway!
As usual, SFist brings out the best and brightest ideas.
Unfortunately, none of us are politicians - we have idiots like Newsom, Daly and Ammiano running the carnival.
They all know how to wear a suit but are barkers one and all. And just as useless. Serve the cotton candy, tell your stories and fade away once you get old.
Not a bad gig.
BEFORE we lay another inch of track or spend another dollar or change an existing line FIX THE GODDAMN SYSTEM ALREADY IN PLACE.
Get these assholes on the television every single day, on radio and in front of the people until they come up with a plan. Did any of you go to school? Do you understand the concept of PUBLIC SERVICE? Allow me:
~~~~~~~~~~~~IT IS TO SERVE THE PUBLIC~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This bunch of selfish morons do not serve anything other than their personal interests.
Cranky much? I would have been too at 1:36 am :)