OPINION: An unbuilt subway line, kind of like a tech startup, is a pulsing vessel of dreams. But the constructed reality is often disappointing. That’s the Central Subway.
This is the question facing the Central Subway, San Francisco’s newest transit line. In my experience, it’s almost impossible to get Google Maps to show the line as a means to travel from point A to point B. Which begs another question: Could the unsparing judgment of algorithms be the undoing of decades of politicking and planning that led to the subway’s creation?
My first two attempts to ride the system were thwarted, one by the recent rains and another by a tight schedule. This would have been a time for an underground transit service to shine, except that the Central Subway isn’t just a subway. Most of the T line it carries is aboveground, and flooding at 16th Street was blocking the trains.
I had better luck the other day when I got off a crowded 8BX at Washington and descended into the Chinatown station, where a train was waiting. It wouldn’t leave for 7 minutes, but I figured I had time. I chatted up Erika Winton and her daughter Piper, who liked the train’s long straps — good for dangling. Winton estimated that the new line saved them 5 minutes versus riding the bus, and praised it as “fast and clean.
Hence the challenge for the Central Subway in attracting new riders. Joslyn Polzien and Jeannie Powers marveled at the Chinatown station as they got off a northbound T. Polzien said it was “like a whole new transit system,” though she doubted it would stay as clean as it was when it opened. But she and Powers were experienced T riders, since both work in Mission Bay.
it’s not like we weren’t warned: A civil grand jury ripped the Central Subway project in 2011, finding it was doomed to underdeliver. The SFMTA touts the new stations’ escalators as “the longest...West of the Mississippi.” I’m not sure that’s something to brag about, since it means longer travel times for riders.
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