Comments on: No Subway For You

By: History Lesson | A Better Oakland

History Lesson | A Better Oakland — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 17:16:47 +0000

[...] this weekend, I highly recommend heading over to Transbay Blog and checking out Eric’s posts No Subway for You and A Tale of Geary Street. Eric has done a phenomenal job and must have put a huge amount of work [...]

By: Bob Davis

Bob Davis — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 19:08:18 +0000

Here in Southern California we had the “Kelker-DeLeuw” study back around 1925. It recommended all sorts of rapid transit construction, and (as I recall) a Union Station for the steam railroad passenger trains. We did finally get a Union Station in 1939, but the rapid transit proposals gathered dust. Unlike San Francisco, we lost all our local rail service (and no, it was not Judge Doom and Cloverleaf Industries). There was a “last chance” effort to upgrade rail service around 1948, when there was still a lot of Pacific Electric and LARy track in service, but when it came time to pay for all the improvements, all the various government entities were “looking out the window”. Private capital wasn’t interested–PE had been losing money for years, and the Huntington estate sold LA Ry (the narrow-gauge “Yellow Cars”) to a subsidiary of National City Lines (there will be a short pause for booing and hissing by passionate trolley fans).
At least in MuniLand, the City kept five of its streetcar lines running, and the Geary Street trolleys lasted until 1956 (several Los Angeles lines went bus during the mid-50′s–it was not a happy time for electric railway enthusiasts.)
Bob Davis
(background info: I lived along a PE line, and even as a ten-year-old, I could tell that the tracks were worn out and needed a complete rebuilding)

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:48:39 +0000

The vagueness of the map is a direct result from both that paragraph Eric quoted and a desire to keep it relatively uncluttered — although, quite frankly, for the discussion here, the stations are less interesting than just the tunnel itself. The tunnel, and the possibility of a true transfer station at Market & Geary. That said, those Post Street stations are awfully frequent.

Personally, I find the 1936 Geary tunnel (the Geary/North Beach alignment, rather than the Geary/Transbay Terminal alignment) to be the most intriguing of the bunch.

By: Eric Fischer

Eric Fischer — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:08:04 +0000

Meanwhile, in the 1948 transportation plan, the stations on the Post Street subway would have been: Leavenworth/Hyde, Mason, Stockton/Grant, Montgomery/Market, 2nd/Mission

By: Eric Fischer

Eric Fischer — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:44:08 +0000

As far as the precise locations of the stations are concerned, the 1931 plan, at least is deliberately vague:

“In order to secure ultimately the benefits of rapid transit, it is necessary to space stations about one-quarter of a mile apart, otherwise little advantage in time saving can be obtained over frequent stop operation on the surface. At the time that subway construction is undertaken, careful consideration will have to be given to the location of these stations. Any announcement of proposed subway station locations at this time would be premature and might result in unwarranted real estate speculation based on possible pedestrian traffic to and from these stations.” (p. 49)

By: andrew

andrew — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:13:43 +0000

I posted – or thought I posted – a comment here late last night, but it doesn’t seem to have gone through. Anyway, thanks for this post and the upcoming Geary and BART posts.

By: A Tale of Geary Street « Transbay Blog

A Tale of Geary Street « Transbay Blog — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:23:21 +0000

[...] Transbay Blog « No Subway For You [...]

By: andrew

andrew — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:40:18 +0000

I don't know if you've come across it, but I found this report quite helpful when doing some research into BART history a few years ago. It was done in 1980, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's somewhat out of date, or if there are additional sources available now that would change some of its conclusions. It's kind of remarkable that there hasn't been more written about the history of rail transit in the Bay Area (and BART in particular).

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:16:45 +0000

Great tidbits, there, Steve, and thanks for linking that article. It fleshes out why this bond was defeated, something I didn’t find that much on. When I was browsing through some old newspaper articles from the time leading up to the 1937 election, they confirm your excerpt about Market Street Railway, and their opposition certainly makes sense.

By: Steve Boland

Steve Boland — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:53:11 +0000

Thanks for the link, Eric. I’ve spent the past half-hour Googling for more with remarkably little success. I’d read before that a Geary subway had been voted on in the ’30s, but it’s sort of amazing that in this age of information overload there could still be so little out there about something of such historical importance. I mean, this could’ve been a real turning point in the city’s history. Anyway, you’ve done a real service by bringing it to everyone’s attention.

Of course, in looking for more on the ’37 plan I came across a bunch of stuff about the streetcar abandonments that followed in short order … it’s incredible to think that within a few years of this vote, we were ripping out tracks with, well, abandon.

This has got me to thinking about other turning points. What if BART hadn’t been built? As much as we like to criticize BART, Seattle, Detroit, Denver and Los Angeles all said no to similar systems around the same time, and you can see where they are now. I’d like to think that if BART hadn’t passed we might’ve eventually built a system that was a better fit–but more likely, we’d be arguing over critical (and by now, enormously expensive) lines and not relative luxuries like San Jose BART.

I did find a couple of interesting tidbits. One is here:

http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~epf/1999/ragen.html

[PUC General Manager E.G. Cahill] also was defeated, by popular vote in 1937, in plans to construct a three line rapid transit system. This defeat was not helped by labor’s belated and half hearted support of the measure. To improve the dilapidated condition of most of the streetcar lines necessitated an enormous outlay of capital. Bus and trolley conversion was cheaper.

There’s a footnote attached to that. It reads:

The bond issue was endorsed by The Labor Council by a vote of 182 to 112 on October 1, 1937. The affirmative action followed four months of debate, with the MSR’s union leading the argument against based on possible loss of employment.

I’ll leave that for others to comment. But I will note that $50 million in 1937 translates to around three-quarters of a billion today, or a little more than half the cost of the Central Subway.