Supe. Wiener: Moar subways in San Francisco, pls!

wiener_subway

Not content with the ever-progressing Central Subway, Castro Supervisor Scott Wiener wrote recently about the need for more tunnels under the surface of our fair city.

San Francisco has a lackluster history of subway construction. BART was built forty years ago as a regional transportation carrier and bored a tunnel along a short section of Market Street, from the Embarcadero to Civic Center, and then extending south through the Mission to Daly City. Muni’s Metro tunnel, which serves as Muni’s only subway line, runs up Market Street and through Twin Peaks to West Portal. That’s it. One Muni subway line in forty years. Neither San Francisco’s west side, north side, nor southeast has subway service, instead relying on slow and traffic-obstructed service by bus or above-ground light rail.

Sing it.

Writing on Medium.com, Wiener goes on to add his voice to support a second Transbay Tube, as well as a subway that connects SF’s western neighborhoods to downtown and one that stretches to the southeastern part of the city.

The whole article, San Francisco Should Always Have a Subway Under Construction, is worth your time.

What do you think? Should we move more transit underground?

Photo by TJ Gehling

Reminder: Transbay Tube will be closed over the holiday weekend

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And with it, travel on BART from one side of the Bay to the other will stop.

But! Someone thought of what a terrible inconvenience this will be to you, dear BART traveler.

BART will offer lifeline bus service between 19th Street in Oakland and the Temporary Transbay Terminal in San Francisco, but the buses are intended only for those who have no other options. The buses will carry customers from 19th Street Station in Oakland to the Temporary Transbay Terminal in San Francisco (a 2 block walk to the Embarcadero Station) or from there back to the East Bay. There will be no additional charge for the bus. The bus bridge will cause 30 minutes to one hour delays for some customers. During our earlier transbay closure in August, the bus trip took about 20 minutes, but when you factor in walking to/from the bus connection, it took about 30 minutes. Check out our tips page for more details about how to get from the Temporary Transbay Terminal to the Embarcadero Station.

In case you missed that wee itto link in the blockquote, here it is again: Tips for travel during Labor Day transbay shutdown. Regular BART service will resume for the Tuesday morning commute.

This might be a good time to just stay on your side of the Bay. Or, go north, go south, just don’t go too far east or west.

After all, it’s Labor Weekend and Burning Man. It’s the BEST TIME OF THE YEAR IN SF OMG.

Photo by Steve Rhodes

More Muni changes coming this month

5-Fulton

As though to suggest that April 2015 service boosts and route name changes were merely the appetizer to this grand meal, SFMTA has announced a second course of nifty newness as part of its Muni Forward program.

SF Examiner reports:

SFMTA will increase service in a number of Muni routes, in no small part aided by a previously announced new 37 buses.

But those increases also come on the heels of another, less well-known upgrade: The restructuring of the 5-Fulton line, which will be voted on Tuesday, Sept. 1 by the SFMTA Board of Directors.

For the math- and calendar-challenged among you, September 1 is TODAY.

But wait! There’s more!

Some of the new Muni Forward changes are sporadic: The 43-Masonic will extend its route to Fort Mason, the 7X-Noriega Express will extend to The Embarcadero, and the 9R will see its service go from a sluggish 12-minute frequency to a speedy 8-minutes per bus. The K-Ingleside, 9R-San Bruno, 22-Fillmore, 21-Hayes, 43-Masonic and 24-Divisadero will all see an increase in frequency.

The changes will go into effect on Sept. 26, 2015.

Read the full Examiner story for more info.

Photo by Ian Fuller

BART to address the worst. sound. ever.

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That’s right, that sound that peels paint off the walls and rends your soul from you body when you ride on BART might, might be on its way out.

According to a San Francisco Magazine piece, BART is hoping to address the infamous screeching sound as part of its track replacement this weekend.

The tube is getting new tracks—some were already replaced at the beginning of the month, when BART shut down transbay service for two days—and more will be replaced during a three-day closure over Labor Day weekend.

Replacing the loudest stretches of track in the tube with smooth new rails should make a difference (how much of a difference no one knows for sure, but we hope it will audible after September 7).

SF Magazine compares the sound to “a steel banshee gargling a chainsaw.” That works, but I think of it more as Satan with elongated fingernails of steel scraping a chalkboard that’s attached to your brain. Or something.

In any case, this sounds like good news to me. I expect my nightmares to subside in short order.

Read the full SF Magazine article here.

Photo by Jeremy Brooks

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