We have two months of ridership data on the new Central Subway, and the second month saw a notable decline in riders — and stunningly, only about 300 people are using the Yerba Buena/Moscone Station on average each day.

For much of the 12 years that the SFMTA has been building the Muni Central Subway system, every time I headed to Chinatown, I would give up on waiting for the 30-Stockton and just walk, muttering under my breath that I couldn’t wait until they finished that underground subway line. Once the system finally opened in January and I took my first ride, the sign said “Next Train: 22 Minutes,” and I shouted “Goddammit! I could have walked there faster!”

Long waits for trains may be one of the reasons that, as the Chronicle reports, Central Subway ridership is already declining just two months into the system’s new era. The Chron analyzed rider data from the two available months (January and February), and despite the bump in ridership from the February 4 Lunar New Year Parade, ridership still declined in February.

“Turnstile data through February, however, show that the Central Subway’s three underground stations have attracted limited use so far,” according to the Chronicle. “The subway actually saw a decline in average daily entries in February compared to most of January, data show. Average daily entries in the Central Subway dropped from 3,227 across the three stations in January to 2,966 in February.”

There are four stations along the Central Subway system, and the numbers are particularly terrible for Yerba Buena/Moscone Station. “Of the underground stations, Yerba Buena/Moscone Station has had the lowest use to date,” the Chron reports. “Three hundred people, on average, entered the station each day last month.”

Visually, the new stations are indeed stunners, particularly the Chinatown-Rose Pak station. As design critic John King raved in the Chronicle, “it prods you to think about what the future could bring while redrawing our mental maps of San Francisco in the here and now.” I don’t even know what any of that means, but I agree with the sentiment 100%.

In fairness, the Central Subway did provide an early bump to Muni ridership. And the decline in riders may be more because of the recent stormy weather than anything else, because the opening coincided with two months of nearly nonstop storms in this town. But if we spent nearly $2 billion on a subway system that averages less than 2,000 riders a day as it currently does, I’m not sure we're going to see SFMTA director Jeffrey Tumlin showing off that custom Central Subway suit as often as he’d planned to.

Related: Pete Buttigieg and Nancy Pelosi Toured the Central Subway, Said It Looks Great [SFist]

Image: @43Masonic via Twitter