There’s plenty of motivation and desire for increased transit down Geary. However, the Geary merchants are steadfastly opposed to light rail because they want the parking spots. My thought is that the 38 needs a properly enforced right of way (be it a bus lane, BRT infrastructure or rail infrastructure), not bling.

The truly sad part about the central subway is that there is both the need and the desire for a subway there. Rose Pak and her minions want this subway come hell or high water. A subway down the Stockton corridor would be great, just not the one(s) that are currently under “consideration”.

There actually is already considerable interest in extending the line at least to North Beach, since the tunnel boring machines will be daylighted there, near Washington Square. If the MTA makes it a priority, planning for that could go on while 3rd St Phase 2 to Chinatown is under construction.

A light rail line down Geary would make such a larger impact on the transit system than the currently planned Central Subway. It’s such a massive gap rail transit-wise in SF, why do they seem so unmotivated to fill it?

Less a lack of motivation, and more a lack of money. With the Central Subway and other projects exhausting local funds, we can’t fund more than BRT for Geary and Van Ness.

A light rail line down Geary would make such a larger impact on the transit system than the currently planned Central Subway. It’s such a massive gap rail transit-wise in SF, why do they seem so unmotivated to fill it?

It *is* going to be an inefficient corridor. The subway platforms will be shortened (to save money) to only allow one car trains. You’ve still got that 90 degree bend at Market. That’s absurdly inefficient. It will never be able scale. Unlike bus routes, upgrading subway infrastructure after the fact is prohibitively expensive.

Or, how about not going to North Beach or Fort Mason? By bringing the tunnel diggers up in Chinatown (or even North Beach), you again sacrifice future flexibility. If you’re going to build something as expensive (to create or upgrade) as a subway, do it right the first time.

Or you could look at how MUNI has handled the disaster that is the T-Third Street. Let’s ignore the T vs (the more reliable) 15 reliability aspect for a moment. Look at the rest of the system. The T has put a drain on the rest of the rail lines. The K directly, because all of a sudden it’s way longer than it ought to be. The rest of the lines, because there simply aren’t enough running trams to go around. Or, how about taking a look at how the T portion of the K/T is handled on the surface. The currently favored track alignment will have the central subway going through 4th and King, where the MTA has already been dragging its feet on assigning signal priority to MUNI vehicles.

What makes you think that any of the lessons to be learned from the T-Boondoggle have actually been learned?

As for BART to SFO, eh. Expensive? Yes. Too expensive? Probably. Inconvenient? Navigating the baggage claim at SFO is tedious, but going from the domestic terminal to the BART station is painless. The Heathrow Terminal 1/2/3 station is awful in contrast.

$2 billion wasted.

Zero other Muni improvements (including the cheap or negative cost ones like moving buses and trains faster through traffic lights and along transit lanes) for the next 20 years.

All this for a grand, grand, earth-shaking total of 4,600 new transit riders.

Do you have any idea how much two billion dollars is? Or how few riders 5000 are (a grand 3% gain for the entire Third Street + Stockton Street corridor)?

Oh, and it will increase transit operating costs — some “investment” — and, if history (T-Third) is any guide at all, decrease reliability.

If you were to stand in the middle of Market Street with a 7,500 foot tall pile of $100 bills you’d be guaranteed to attract more transit riders than this heinous, loathesome, pork barrel scam.

Muni must die.

Perhaps more precisely, it was built around transit. San Francisco is lucky in that most of it was developed prior to the advent of the automobile, so its development pattern is a direct reflection of the plentiful streetcar access that existed at that time.

Going back to the DC Metro, BART and DC Metro are almost identical in terms of total track miles, yet the latter is far more useful for getting around the urban core.

The BART vs. DC Metro comparison is another one you’ll find in a few places around the archives here, and it’s become something of a poster child comparison in the urban transit advocacy community because of the starkly contrasting ridership statistics in DC vs. the Bay Area (even if you were to throw in Muni Metro as well). Though it’s also worth mentioning that Metro doesn’t just serve its urban core better than BART does, but also has that Metro has been successful at encouraging urban density development outside the urban core, in areas that are otherwise suburban except for the immediate vicinity of the Metro station.