Post by mattapoisett on Feb 22, 2008 8:07:29 GMT -8
What makes me wince about this project is in it's current plan it would skip connecting to Bart at Market St. and misses an opportunity to head down Geary. [Geary is the Wilshire of SF.]
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/article?f=/c/a/2008/02/21/BA11V61G4.DTL
Nevius: Chinatown subway plan makes me wince
C.W. Nevius
Thursday, February 21, 2008
There's really only one question to ask about the proposal to bore a light-rail subway deep under the heart of downtown San Francisco.
You're kidding, right?
Just the initial math makes your head hurt. Basically it works out to somewhere between $1.22 billion and $1.4 billion for an underground railway that runs for less than two miles and has only three stops. That's not a transit system, it's a model railroad.
When completed, the short spur would run from Fourth and Brannan, under Market Street and up Stockton Street to a station in the middle of Chinatown, a distance of 1.7 miles. Throw in a few of the inevitable cost overruns and this could work out to a billion dollars a mile.
City officials know this sounds hefty, of course, but provide stats and figures to suggest that it isn't out of line with other projects. It is less than BART to the San Francisco Airport, for example. (Although it could be argued that there was a greater need for a rapid transit alternative to the airport than to the center of Chinatown.)
No matter. This is the kind of big, splashy project that city officials love to put their name on. Mayor Gavin Newsom may have put it best.
"It is very costly, no question about that," Newsom said. "But we are very hard-headed about making this happen."
Basically, the argument seems to boil down to this - we've got the money (as if federal tax dollars grow on trees), the Chinatown community is behind it, why not build it?
Oh, let me count some of the reasons.
"How many other subway runs have three stops?" asks project opponent Howard Strassman. (Strassman is a transportation expert for the Sierra Club, but says he is speaking only for himself on this issue.) "It's a very short run. It's pretty silly."
The bureaucrats at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency say its abbreviated route is actually one of the good things about the central subway plan. Previous incarnations were longer, more complicated and more expensive. By moving the beginning of the underground portion of the railway toward Market Street, it cut the cost.
In addition, they say, if they'd stuck with a plan to put a station at Market Street, instead of moving it up to Union Square, where the plan has it now, it would have been hundreds of millions more expensive.
But, critics say, a stop on Market beneath which BART and other Muni lines already run might have made this whole thing an easier sell. That would have created an opportunity for a single station where riders could make connections between regional and local trains, almost like Grand Central Terminal in New York. Instead, riders will have to walk all the way up to Union Square.
Oh, and did I mention that in order to get under the BART tube, the subway station at Union Square will have to be at least 95 feet below the surface. That's nine stories.
No worries, says Nathanial Ford, CEO of the San Francisco MTA. He says high-speed escalators and elevators are in use in other projects around the country.
Even so, says Strassman, "That's a very long escalator."
Keep in mind that the tunneling and digging involved is going to occur beneath one of the densest urban centers in the United States. The Federal Transit Administration says the downtown area is populated with "approximately 53,600 people per square mile." How are they going to create two side-by-side tunnels down the center of Stockton Street?
Simple, says the MTA's Ford. They're going to use gigantic tunneling machines that will burrow under the middle of town, carve out a passageway deep beneath the streets, and then pop out of the ground at Washington Square Park.
What is it about that image of deep, underground dirt-munching machines in earthquake country that makes me wince?
"I live in that area and do my shopping on Stockton," said John Holtzclaw, a transportation activist. "There's going to be disruption on Stockton, even if they tunnel underground."
Newsom says he's heard the comparisons to Boston's much-maligned "Big Dig." Originally estimated to cost $2.4 billion, the project ran into epic problems and ended up costing over $14 billion. But he says don't worry.
"This is not going to become the Big Dig," Newsom said. "I get that 50 times a day. They are completely different projects."
As Ford says, getting the funding for this kind of project isn't easy - even if you have Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in your corner.
"There is lots of competition for these kinds of projects nationally," Ford said. "If we didn't have our act together, it would be exposed."
And frankly, most of the complaints about the project are likely to have little effect anyhow. Jerry Cauthen, a transportation advocate with San Francisco Tomorrow, says he "will appeal to the Board of Supervisors, who will probably kiss me off. The momentum for this is already going."
So sit down, relax and get ready to watch. The whole thing is supposed to be done by 2016, but even Newsom talked about the inevitability of increasing cost and time. But it will work out, he says.
"People are going to be wildly enthusiastic about this," Newsom said. "Once it's done."
C.W. Nevius' column appears on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. E-mail him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/article?f=/c/a/2008/02/21/BA11V61G4.DTL
Nevius: Chinatown subway plan makes me wince
C.W. Nevius
Thursday, February 21, 2008
There's really only one question to ask about the proposal to bore a light-rail subway deep under the heart of downtown San Francisco.
You're kidding, right?
Just the initial math makes your head hurt. Basically it works out to somewhere between $1.22 billion and $1.4 billion for an underground railway that runs for less than two miles and has only three stops. That's not a transit system, it's a model railroad.
When completed, the short spur would run from Fourth and Brannan, under Market Street and up Stockton Street to a station in the middle of Chinatown, a distance of 1.7 miles. Throw in a few of the inevitable cost overruns and this could work out to a billion dollars a mile.
City officials know this sounds hefty, of course, but provide stats and figures to suggest that it isn't out of line with other projects. It is less than BART to the San Francisco Airport, for example. (Although it could be argued that there was a greater need for a rapid transit alternative to the airport than to the center of Chinatown.)
No matter. This is the kind of big, splashy project that city officials love to put their name on. Mayor Gavin Newsom may have put it best.
"It is very costly, no question about that," Newsom said. "But we are very hard-headed about making this happen."
Basically, the argument seems to boil down to this - we've got the money (as if federal tax dollars grow on trees), the Chinatown community is behind it, why not build it?
Oh, let me count some of the reasons.
"How many other subway runs have three stops?" asks project opponent Howard Strassman. (Strassman is a transportation expert for the Sierra Club, but says he is speaking only for himself on this issue.) "It's a very short run. It's pretty silly."
The bureaucrats at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency say its abbreviated route is actually one of the good things about the central subway plan. Previous incarnations were longer, more complicated and more expensive. By moving the beginning of the underground portion of the railway toward Market Street, it cut the cost.
In addition, they say, if they'd stuck with a plan to put a station at Market Street, instead of moving it up to Union Square, where the plan has it now, it would have been hundreds of millions more expensive.
But, critics say, a stop on Market beneath which BART and other Muni lines already run might have made this whole thing an easier sell. That would have created an opportunity for a single station where riders could make connections between regional and local trains, almost like Grand Central Terminal in New York. Instead, riders will have to walk all the way up to Union Square.
Oh, and did I mention that in order to get under the BART tube, the subway station at Union Square will have to be at least 95 feet below the surface. That's nine stories.
No worries, says Nathanial Ford, CEO of the San Francisco MTA. He says high-speed escalators and elevators are in use in other projects around the country.
Even so, says Strassman, "That's a very long escalator."
Keep in mind that the tunneling and digging involved is going to occur beneath one of the densest urban centers in the United States. The Federal Transit Administration says the downtown area is populated with "approximately 53,600 people per square mile." How are they going to create two side-by-side tunnels down the center of Stockton Street?
Simple, says the MTA's Ford. They're going to use gigantic tunneling machines that will burrow under the middle of town, carve out a passageway deep beneath the streets, and then pop out of the ground at Washington Square Park.
What is it about that image of deep, underground dirt-munching machines in earthquake country that makes me wince?
"I live in that area and do my shopping on Stockton," said John Holtzclaw, a transportation activist. "There's going to be disruption on Stockton, even if they tunnel underground."
Newsom says he's heard the comparisons to Boston's much-maligned "Big Dig." Originally estimated to cost $2.4 billion, the project ran into epic problems and ended up costing over $14 billion. But he says don't worry.
"This is not going to become the Big Dig," Newsom said. "I get that 50 times a day. They are completely different projects."
As Ford says, getting the funding for this kind of project isn't easy - even if you have Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in your corner.
"There is lots of competition for these kinds of projects nationally," Ford said. "If we didn't have our act together, it would be exposed."
And frankly, most of the complaints about the project are likely to have little effect anyhow. Jerry Cauthen, a transportation advocate with San Francisco Tomorrow, says he "will appeal to the Board of Supervisors, who will probably kiss me off. The momentum for this is already going."
So sit down, relax and get ready to watch. The whole thing is supposed to be done by 2016, but even Newsom talked about the inevitability of increasing cost and time. But it will work out, he says.
"People are going to be wildly enthusiastic about this," Newsom said. "Once it's done."
C.W. Nevius' column appears on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. E-mail him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.
