Extending S.F.’s Central Subway would draw riders, study says

A construction worker prepares one of the two tunnel boring machines for extraction at Powell Street and Columbus Avenue in San Francisco, Calif. on Tuesday, June 25, 2014. Big Alma and Mom Chung have completed the tunneling portion of Muni's Central Subway project from South of Market to North Beach. less A construction worker prepares one of the two tunnel boring machines for extraction at Powell Street and Columbus Avenue in San Francisco, Calif. on Tuesday, June 25, 2014. Big Alma and Mom Chung have completed ... more Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Extending S.F.’s Central Subway would draw riders, study says 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

It’s not time to start planning your Muni Metro ride to pick up crab or cheap souvenirs at Fisherman’s Wharf, but a new study finds that extending the Central Subway to the northeastern waterfront is not only possible but would draw tens of thousands of new riders and compete well for federal funding.

The Central Subway, itself an extension of the T-Third Muni Metro line, is under construction from the Caltrain station at Fourth and King streets to Chinatown. Tunnels, but no rails, reach farther, to North Beach. The study is the first to look at bringing a rail line to two of the city’s top tourism destinations and densest neighborhoods.

And while the study offers encouragement to those who would welcome an extension, the project has no funding, isn’t yet included in any transit plans, and would require extensive planning and years of construction. And generate, most assuredly, plenty of opposition.

“While projections of this type are difficult to make, the earliest a new rail extension to Fisherman’s Wharf could begin operations would be at least a decade in the future,” said Paul Rose, a spokesman for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which commissioned the study along with the San Francisco Transportation Authority and the city Planning Department.

The 158-page study makes no recommendations but takes a thorough look at the costs, benefits and viability of an extension. It will be presented to the Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors on Tuesday, with sessions before other city agencies, commissions and officials to follow.

“Now that there is a cost-benefit analysis, we can take our place among the many worthy transit projects in the city,” said Julie Christensen, of SF NexTstop, a community group pushing for the extension. “That’s all it means. But the project ranks very high when you look at the costs and benefits.”

According to the study, the project would cost anywhere from $367 million to $1.4 billion, if it were built today, to construct a North Beach station and extend the tracks to Fisherman’s Wharf, where one or two stations might be built. That depends on which of three basic routes the subway would take and how much of it would run on surface streets or underground.

Potential routes

While the study outlines 14 potential routes, they would all start with extending the rails from the end-of-the-line Chinatown station, scheduled to open with the rest of the Central Subway in early 2019, to the site of the former Pagoda Palace Theater near Washington Square. That location was leased by the MTA to extract the two tunnel-boring machines used to dig the 1.7-mile subway and could be become the site of a North Beach station.

From there, the rail line would extend down either Powell Street or Columbus Avenue to Beach Street. Stations could be built at Conrad Square at the foot of Columbus or Muni’s Kirkland Yard, now used to store buses, near the foot of Powell. The line could also head down Powell and head west on Beach, connecting Conrad Square and Kirkland Yard. Or it could make a one-way loop down Powell to Beach to Columbus.

Trains would run every 2½ minutes during commute hours, and would take up to 3½ minutes to get from Chinatown to Fisherman’s Wharf underground or up to 5 minutes on the surface, the study found. Riders would take an estimated 40,000 trips on that stretch of the subway daily, boosting ridership on the overall T-Third line by about 55 percent.

Opponent’s argument

North Beach resident Howard Wong, a member of Save Muni, which has opposed the Central Subway, said it would be a waste of time and money. Instead of spending hundreds of millions on a Muni Metro extension, the MTA should establish a network of free “loop” buses that carry passengers through the area to shopping and other destinations, including existing subway stops.

“We don’t think it’s a wise move to invest a lot of money when you gain very little, and it takes a long time and takes money away from things like free transit, which we’re starting to see a lot around the rest of the country.”

Christensen said the project would benefit the city enormously, giving hotel and restaurant workers an easier way to get to work on transit and connecting the hotel-rich Wharf with Moscone Convention Center. It would also give the city a north-south rail line serving populous neighborhoods that rely on slow and often-overwhelmed bus service.

“Basically, the study concludes that the question of whether to extend the T line is best answered by 'Duh!’ or 'Hell, yes!’” she said.

The next stops for the subway extension would be its inclusion in future MTA plans on rail capacity and strategy, and in city and regional transportation plans. If it were to emerge from those plans as the city’s top rail-expansion project, it would then begin years of environmental review, design and, eventually, construction.