Comments on: Central Subway Receives $9.9 Million Federal Grant

By: patrick

patrick — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:24:15 +0000

They have to build it high floor, the entire Muni system is high floor. I agree that high floor is lame, but those decisions were made years ago and it would make even less sense to have mismatched equipment for 20 years.

By: jim

jim — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:24:03 +0000

@mikesonn: Yes, car-free Stockton is the answer. Two bidirectional lanes of dedicated right of way from Caltrain down 4th to Stockton would do the trick. You would probably need to make Kearny/3rd two way and remove any parking to accommodate additional traffic removed from Stockton/4th.

Car-free Stockton would allow a surface stop and much better pedestrian conditions at Union Square and would allow for the creation of an outdoor farmers market in Chinatown which would be a significant tourist and resident attraction.

It could be completed in a relatively short time with a small fraction of the expense of a subway. They should do this even as the central subway gets built as it probably cannot be stopped at this point.

By: mikesonn

mikesonn — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:52:06 +0000

Troy, agreed but we’ve been over this a bunch. It is a fulfillment of Willie Brown’s promise to Chinatown that they will get a direct transit connection because the Embarcadero Freeway came down.

Citizenal, I really hope you are right, but reason dictates that you are WAY off. Have you ridden the 30/45/9x? I would like to hear how you figure that the demographic riding those buses would switch to the subway. Also, no one will ride this to North Beach, they will still ride the bus because this DOES NOT come within 5 blocks of the North Beach tourists sites.

The only true solution for Chinatown is taking the plunge on a car-free Stockton St. I would like to see this city stand behind the transit first policy instead of pushing for a bloated project to protect street level traffic.

By: Troy

Troy — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:06:51 +0000

I agree that this is a terrible use of transit dollars. It boggles the mind that *this* is a transit priority instead of a Geary Subway. A 1.6 billion dollar subway that is like a mile long and connects caltrain to Chinatown? how does that make any sense?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:06:42 +0000

I am not concerned with the crowding at all, I don’t think it will get any kind of crowding. And the fact that they’re using high-floor platforms will only add to the cost to converting the platforms to low-floor when low-floor cars are acquired in 2030.

By: Citizenal

Citizenal — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:03:47 +0000

By “flawed,” do you mean it will immediately be crowded and well-patronized? If so, I agree. It’s flawed.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:37:13 +0000

Watch, as soon as the project is over in 2020, they’re going to ask for Bus-only access on Stockton Street.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:36:08 +0000

This project is fatally flawed in many ways