Streetsblog San Francisco

The MTA received approval from the Federal Transit Administration on Thursday to enter into Final Design for the Central Subway project.

In a letter (PDF) that also echoed concerns from some local transit advocates about the project, the FTA officially approved the MTA's request to move into Final Design on the 1.7-mile light rail and subway line, which is considered phase two of the T-Third light rail line, extending it from Fourth and King Streets to Chinatown. The approval is an important step for the project as the MTA moves towards eventually seeking a full-funding grant agreement from the FTA, the final step in the New Starts process.

It will still be almost two years before Muni could receive a full grant for the subway, which is now expected to cost $1.6 billion, with service currently expected to begin in 2018.

"We are deeply gratified by this decision," said MTA Executive Director Nat Ford in a release. "We are making tremendous progress toward improved transportation for the communities along the congested corridor that the Central Subway will serve."

In the second paragraph of the four-page letter, the FTA states several concerns that transit advocates and project critics have had about the project, including the MTA's ability to maintain its equipment in a state of good repair, which is required by federal law before the FTA will fund new projects. Before the FTA will consider awarding a full-funding grant agreement, the MTA will be required to "develop and implement a financial plan demonstrating that construction and operation of the Central Subway project will not adversely affect current transit operations or reduce state of good repair expenditures."

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The Federal Transit Administration announced today that the long-planned and much debated Central Subway project will receive a $9.9 million grant to support ongoing preliminary engineering and design work. The project would extend light rail service on the T-Third line with a surface stop on 4th Street near Brannan and subway stops in the SoMa, Union Square and Chinatown neighborhoods.

The grant is only a small portion of the Central Subway's $1.57 billion price tag, but the federal government is expected to ultimately pick up two-thirds of that cost through its New Starts program. Today's grant brings the FTA's contribution to $66 million so far, even before it's given final design approval.

The project has its fair share of detractors, even among transit advocates, who cite concerns about its costs, the design of its stations, its terminus at Chinatown instead of North Beach, and its potential interference with a future Geary subway line.

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City Visions Radio will be debating the merits of the Central Subway project on their show tonight, asking whether the project is an innovation or a boondoggle.

The Central Subway project, which links Chinatown with the Third Street light rail and the Caltrain terminal at 4th and King, has its detractors, though most of the political class supports it. "With the Muni budget already in crisis," City Visions producers ask, "is it worth the cost? Will enough people ride the Chinatown subway to make it worthwhile?"

Joining City Visions Radio host Lauren Meltzer to discuss the project are MTA's John Funghi, project manager for the Central Subway, David Schonbrunn, president of Transdef and a member of Save Muni, a new organization formed to oppose the current central subway plan, and Andrew Sullivan, chair of Rescue Muni, a riders’ advocacy and watchdog group.

Catch the show tonight at 7 pm on 91.7 KALW or listen live at www.kalw.org or www.cityvisionsradio.com

Now that the Central Subway has received its Record Of Decision (ROD) from the Federal Transit Administration, advocates are pressing the MTA to start planning for the subway’s extension into North Beach and beyond.

The Central Subway is considered phase two of the T-Third Muni Metro line, extending that service from Fourth and King Streets to Chinatown. It is proposed to enter a subway on Fourth Street under the freeway, and continue in a subway to its stub end destination in Chinatown.

Among the criticisms of the project when it was proposed is the fact that the dead-end station failed to connect to the rest of the Muni network very effectively, limiting its utility and ridership. Yet the MTA could not publicly discuss the possibility of an extension for bureaucratic reasons that are too typical and indicative of the illness that affects community planning in the United States. Because its proposal to the Federal Transit Administration did not contemplate the extension, to formally discuss it would have called into question the definition of the project and forced the FTA to consider the possibility that the MTA had misrepresented the project as smaller than it actually is, which would have at least delayed and possibly killed the project.

With the ROD out of the way, the MTA is free to consider an extension. Groups such as SPUR have argued that a one-stop extension to North Beach is so effective and so affordable that the MTA ought to complete the extension as part of the same construction contract for the rest of the Central Subway, simply keeping the tunnel boring machine (TBM) at work a little bit longer. In fact, the MTA is already planning to extract the TBM from the ground in North Beach near the location where another station should be located.

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