Posts Tagged ‘munimetro’

Previewing Muni’s new Central Subway

December 8th, 2022

When I first moved to San Francisco there was a new surface-level light rail line under construction along the east side of the city: the T Third Street line. This would be the largest expansion on the Muni Metro transit network since it opened, serving a part of the city that was both underserved by transit and filled with former industrial areas ripe for future development.

But the best part? This was only phase one of the plan. Phase two of what was then branded the “Central T Subway” was the city’s first new subway line in ages, connecting the new T Third line directly to downtown and Chinatown.

The first phase of the line opened in 2007, and after several delays the subway portion opened for free weekend preview service this month — some 15 years later.

Technically phase two involves four stations but one of them is above ground (yawn) so I’m only going to focus on the underground stations. We’ll go from south to north.

 

Central Subway Central Subway

 

Yerba Buena/Moscone

Located about a block away from the entrances to the city’s Moscone Center buildings, this stop is aimed at catering to the convention goers in town. It’s not a particularly fancy station but it’s filled with giant rooms with large pieces of art.

Notably the building features large format prints of photos taken by a local student during the construction of the first part of Moscone Center back in the early 1980’s.

I’m not sure how many people would stop at this station to visit Yerba Buena Gardens, but it’s also close to SFMOMA and the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

 

Central Subway
Central Subway Central Subway

 

Union Square/Market Street Station

This station is almost entirely located under Stockton Street, with the exception of a small entrance on the southeast corner of Union Square. The concourse level also directly connects to the concourse level at the existing Powell Street Station.

This station had to be built with limited space above ground and had to be deep enough to go underneath the existing subway under Market Street. Despite the public art in the station it still feels a little utilitarian.

Makes you wonder what it would take to add some leaded blast doors and turn this into a nuclear fallout shelter if it comes to that.

 

Central Subway
Central Subway Central Subway

 

Chinatown – Rose Pak Station

The new station with the largest above ground footprint is right in the middle of Chinatown. It will eventually have a public plaza on the roof although that wasn’t open the two times I visited.

The upper floors have a deep red and light emerald green color scheme that practically screams “Chinatown.” Unfortunately this design doesn’t fully make its way down to the platform level where it would be a good visual indicator for tourists and casual riders.

Since this station is the last stop on the line, trains can pull in and out on either side of the platform. There’s also a position to position extra trains in the tunnel to the north of the station.

 

The Central Subway’s most obvious problems

Any critic of this project will stress that this subway cost about one billion dollars per mile to build. That’s a fair criticism, although the biggest contributor to the cost wasn’t boring the tunnels but rather unforeseen consequences of the design choices, such as building subway stations deep underground.

The depth of the stations also presents some serious water leak issues. Yes, I was there on the opening weekend when Muni staff had tried to divert water seeping into Union Square Station using red plastic Solo cups. I’ll admit I didn’t believe what I was seeing at first; look, college was a long time ago and I probably haven’t seen one of those red Solo cups since then. I’d be a lot more worried about this if it were to ever flood again in San Francisco.

In my above description of the stations you might have noticed I only ever mentioned a single track switch. There’s one lonely crossover (or “scissor”) switch in the entire subway for trains to switch direction. That also means there’s a single point of failure, just like Muni Metro’s original subway where trains were regularly delayed due to a similar design at the pre-1990’s version of Embarcadero Station.

 

What could be easily improved

The station names commit what I consider to be a cardinal sin in place names: they’re too long. In my mind any type of transit stop — subway, airport, etc. — should be named and only named for the area it serves. That’s why I’d drop Rose Pak’s name from Chinatown Station. It doesn’t aid in navigation to have her name attached to the station. Likewise, Yerba Buena/Moscone should be shortened to simply “Moscone” as Yerba Buena Gardens is a relatively modest affair in comparison to the convention center. It also doesn’t help that the station is nowhere near Yerba Buena Island.

Union Square/Market Street Station is also way too long, but why does it need a name at all? Typically when a subway or train station adds a new platform, it’s absorbed into the existing station. Union Square/Market Street is clearly an extension of Powell Street Station — so why add to the confusion with a different name?

 

What needs to happen

Almost everyone agrees that it was a mistake to end the Central Subway in Chinatown. And you know what? The tunnel itself already extends to Washington Square in North Beach where the two boring machines were extracted at the site of the former Pagoda Palace movie theater.

Now obviously it would be disruptive to dig out a station, but since the tunnel already ends right in the middle of North Beach it seems hard to justify not building a station there.

The good news is there’s already plans in the works to build this as well as an extension to Fisherman’s Wharf. It’s still in the early stages but at least it’s a step in the right direction. Unfortunately though with projects like these the longer you wait to build them, the more they will inevitably cost.

 

One more thing

A few years ago I wrote about how the Central Subway’s control screen became briefly visible on the web. While that particular page was quickly reverted, it’s back and better than ever — but not at the same location.

Through some extremely advanced hacking (looking at the URL of a web browser displayed on a screen in one of the stations) I happened to come across this page which includes real-time snapshots of both subways.

 

The Central Subway is open for weekend preview service until January, when it will require paid fare and will run the full length between Sunnydale and Chinatown.

There is currently no cellular service in the Central Subway but the city’s free public wifi is available.

Thoughts on extending the T line

June 16th, 2020

With all the recent news of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, even avid readers of local news might have missed that two new BART stations opened over the weekend in the South Bay.

Here in San Francisco, Muni Metro’s T line extension is still under construction with the Central Subway from SOMA to Chinatown. That hasn’t stopped people from pondering how the subway could be extended further north — the tunnel already goes well into North Beach, and with further digging could connect Fisherman’s Wharf and perhaps the Marina.

I think it’s also worth considering ways to extend the T line in the south end of the city to connect both neighborhoods without much transit access and to existing Muni Metro rail lines. This also has the advantage of connecting to San Francisco’s BART and CalTrain stations.

To some extent at least one of these routes seems inevitable, if for no other reason the SOMA to Chinatown subway would benefit from more connections to the south half of the city. All of these options could be built partially or entirely at street level to reduce cost.

Credit for the Muni Metro map goes to the German version of Wikipedia. I’ve annotated it in pink with my proposals. You can tell which segments would require new construction as they’re not next to an existing Muni Metro line.

16th Street to West Portal

Although this corridor is already well served by transit, hear me out. This would provide light rail to the new Chase Center, UCSF Mission Bay, 16th and Mission BART, and potentially something far more exciting — access to the Twin Peaks tunnel.

An above ground route on this alignment would already have rails connecting Market Street to the K, L, and M lines via the (unused) above ground rail connection near Castro and Market to the existing subway heading towards Forest Hill and West Portal. This connection to the subway hasn’t been used since the early 1980’s but could be brought back into service.

This route could either overlap or replace Muni’s 22 bus line alignment on the east/west half of the existing 22 line.

Cesar Chavez to Noe Valley

Connecting the T to the J line in an alignment on the south end of the Mission on Cesar Chavez would complement 24th and Mission BART and provide a connection to the Bernal Heights area as well as Noe Valley. 

This could provide a much needed connection to BART while also taking advantage of the little used J line tracks to better serve this section of the city.

Hunter’s Point to the Zoo

While an exact alignment is tricky to pin down, the goal would be to take passengers from Hunter’s Point to the Alemany Farmers’ Market to Glen Park BART, share the M-line tracks to the L-line tracks to Stern Grove and finally to the SF Zoo.

Both this new line and the existing L line would share a terminal stop at the same location.

Although it may not seem like the most interesting route today, with new housing slated for Hunter’s Point it has a lot of promise for the future. And personally I’d love a rail connection to the city’s largest farmer’s market.

Geneva Avenue to Park Merced

This corridor on the southern edge of the city could provide access to the Cow Palace before connecting with the existing M line toward Park Merced and SF State’s main campus.

Park Merced already has a long standing desire to improve transit access for its residents.  This could also connect with BART at Balboa Park depending on the alignment.

Just go to SFO already

There’s probably zero chance of this happening, but it would be great for both locals and tourists alike if the T line somehow went so far south it connected Brisbane, South San Francisco, San Bruno, and connected to SFO (perhaps via the AirTrain?)

Unfortunately all of these new stops would be in San Mateo County, outside of Muni’s operating area of San Francisco. Would San Mateo County be willing to chip in for this? One can dream. 

The Central Subway is here… on the web

September 10th, 2019


 

Hot on the heels of my previous post about subway station plaques, it appears three new San Francisco subway stations are online: well, on the web, anyway.

Today I was making my way to Muni Metro and happened to pull up SF Muni Central on my phone to see if I had any chance of getting a train at a reasonable time. But something looked a bit off.

See, normally the SF Muni Central website displays a screenshot of the train positions in the subway. It’s part of the train control system and not very user friendly, but it’s easy enough to figure out once you’ve gotten used to it.

This time, a separate section appeared underneath the subway map…

 

 

It’s clearly a desktop window with the title “Line Overview.” But why? What does this even mean?

I’m going to make a wild assumption this is something we wouldn’t normally see: the user interface for the train control system. If you do a Google image search for the keywords “thales line overview” you’ll find slides with screenshots that look remarkably similar to this. Thales is the company that provides Muni’s train control, now that Thales owns a former division of Alcatel — it’s all very complicated.

 

 

But I’ve saved the best for last. On the bottom right is a new subway! Yes, it’s the yet-to-open Central Subway.

Following Muni’s convention of three letter platform designations with the first two letters indicating the name of the station, we have:

  • CT: Chinatown
  • US: Union Square
  • YB: Yerba Buena

The other two platforms at either end are presumably for maintenance purposes.

Now, obviously this isn’t finalized and probably not even meant to be shown to the public, but if this is the layout I’m already seeing two big problems.

  1. There’s only one place for trains to turn around at the end. We saw how poorly this worked with Embarcadero back in the day, with Muni eventually moving the turnback into the N-Judah extension that had room for more than one “scissor” turnback section. That could be a problem if a lot of people are using the subway to get to Warriors games, for example.
  2. The entire map seems flipped around. Conventionally Muni Metro has positioned outbound to inbound as right to left, but here it’s the opposite. Unless they intend Chinatown to be an outbound station, but that wouldn’t really make sense — inbound has always meant “towards downtown.” I hope that’s not how they’re going to label the stations, because that would be very confusing.

We’ll know more once the Central Subway finally opens. But as of now we don’t even have an official opening date yet.

 
Update: The bottom half of the image disappeared from SF Muni Central the next day.

“Save Harvey Milk Plaza” written in dust

June 3rd, 2019

Save Harvey Milk Plaza
 

Yesterday while walking through Church Station I noticed the renovations there were winding down, and behind the semi-demolished storage area someone had written SaveHarveyMilkPlaza.org in the dust on the orange railing.

This is a reaction to proposed changes at Castro Station, the next station outbound from Church. The plaza on the south side of the station was dedicated to Harvey Milk back in 1985, and hasn’t changed much since. Muni intends to make some changes to the plaza to address ADA compliance issues, which somehow ballooned into a complete overhaul of the plaza. Two years after deciding to make big changes, the architectural firm they’ve hired still hasn’t settled on a final design.

The people behind the the aforementioned “save the plaza” website would prefer making minimal changes to the plaza, although even they have some ideas to improve it, like installing murals, AIDS memorials, and other historical links to the area. The groups who want to replace vs. restore Harvey Milk Plaza may have more common ground than they think; both want a nice subway entrance at Castro and Market, and both agree that some changes are necessary.

For my part I don’t have any particularly strong opinions about whether the plaza should be renovated vs. replaced, mainly because I don’t really like the idea of transit plazas in the first place. Just look at the 16th and Mission BART plaza or the Powell Station sunken plaza by the cable car turnaround — nobody would argue those are excellent uses of public space.

Fortunately Harvey Milk Plaza is significantly smaller and doesn’t suffer from the same problems, but it’s not perfect either. For my part I’d advocate for making the following changes.

First, the above ground portion of the plaza isn’t well integrated into the bus stop along Market Street. In part this is due to the geography of the area, but the bus stop is on a narrow part of the sidewalk and is located a ways back from the main plaza entrance. One way or another this should be addressed.

Second, the plaza’s maintenance is an embarrassment. The sunken garden part of the plaza was fenced off and abandoned long ago, the exposed concrete is dirty and covered in streaks of rust, etc. A new plaza alone isn’t going to address this issue — or could make matters worse if it’s designed without a maintenance plan and a budget to accompany it.

There is a certain irony of course in advocating against certain changes by scrawling in a thick layer of dust to reveal a 1970’s orange paint job. Then again, if they’d simply written “WASH ME” I might not have taken the time to write this blog post.

Last Stop / First Stop

November 11th, 2018

Last Stop/First Stop
 

While hanging out at Ocean Beach and the west end of Golden Gate Park today I happened to notice something new; the funny little building at the N-Judah turnaround received an updated design recently. If you never noticed this small building before it’s located directly across Judah Street from Java Beach Cafe.

The new design features the words “Last Stop / First Stop” written in large capital letters painted at an angle. A quick Google search revealed this to be the work of local designer Jeff Canham. Canham’s designs can be spotted all around the city, including Mollusk Surf Shop a couple blocks away from the N-Judah turnaround.

Muni Metro updates its subway audio announcements

September 14th, 2018

Hear the new announcements for yourself in the above video I recorded at Church Station. Please forgive all the background noise, it’s a subway station after all.

 

Recently Muni Metro has been undergoing somewhat of a renaissance, from the new light rail trains to the colorful real time information signs to the upcoming Central Subway.

Another recent Muni Metro upgrade hasn’t made any headlines — the new automated voice announcements at the subway stations. Like the previous version of the announcements they begin with two piano notes representing inbound vs. outbound, but now the outbound voice is male. The inbound voice remains female.

Both voices sound significantly more natural and less choppy than what they replaced. The previous female voice spoke in a halting rhythm with uneven tonality, which gave the announcements a robotic quality. This video (not mine) has some good examples. That announcement voice replaced a different choppy female voice sometime in the mid 2000’s. Many of us jokingly referred to these voices as “Ms. Muni” back in the day, as in “hey grab your backpack, Ms. Muni says our train’s arriving.”

They’ve also added information about where the arriving train is headed. For whatever reason the previous announcements confusingly only included the destination for inbound trains, and only the route designation letter on outbound trains. Why make this change? To make a long story short, Sunnydale will presumably flip from the T-Third’s inbound destination to its outbound destination when the Central Subway opens. The new announcements ought to streamline this transition.

Additionally the new announcements dropped the practice of saying the route destination letter twice for a two car train. No more “two car, L. L. in five minutes.” The reason for these pecular announcements was largely historical, as Muniverse explains:

When both Muni Metro and the Market Street Subway openend, [sic] one and two-car trains were coupled into three and four-car trains as they entered the subway at West Portal and the Duboce & Church tunnel portal. It was a problematic workaround to deal with tunnel capacity problems before the Market Street Subway was completely computerized.

In other words Muni Metro’s audio announcements finally entered the 21st century. It’s about time.

First impressions of the new Muni Metro trains

June 14th, 2018

New Muni Metro train in service
New Muni Metro train in service New Muni Metro train in service
 

This evening I’d planned to take Muni Metro home from work as I often do, but there was an unexpected twist: as I got to the platform level, one of the new trains was pulling in. Finally I’d get to ride one! Unfortunately for me it was going in the opposite direction I was headed, so I only took it one stop just for fun.

Some background: The new trains cars are Siemens S200 light rail vehicles (LRVs) which are slowly replacing the 90’s era Breda LRVs. The Breda’s weren’t always the most reliable, especially their door mechanisms. With the new subway line opening (maybe) next year Muni thought it would be a good idea to start ordering new train cars sooner rather than later, and to have narrowly-defined reliability requirements in the contract. So that’s how we wound up with these new Siemens S200 train cars. Muni calls this new fleet “LRV 4” for some reason they haven’t explained as far as I know.

In my brief ride today, here’s a few things that immediately stood out:

  • The exterior is a little boxier looking than the current Breda LRVs but otherwise looks pretty similar. The color scheme is nearly identical.
  • These are very quiet trains, which has been par for the course in major European cities for a while but is new to SF.
  • The seating arrangement is more like a typical subway with benches along the walls rather than two-across bus-style seating. This should leave more standing room during rush hour.
  • Onboard audio cues sound different and may take some getting used to.
  • The Clipper card readers have a new design.

But the biggest difference? This one’s impossible to ignore:

New Muni Metro train in service
 

In the middle of the train is a live display with the destination, the next couple of stops, and the transfer points for the next stop. Hopefully they keep this up to date as bus routes change. There’s also an argument to be made that “Cable Car” should be more specific since there are multiple lines. But that’s all nitpicking, overall the new display is a massive improvement.

That’s all I have for now. In the future I may have some deeper impressions to share, particularly on street level stops when the stairs come down.

If you’d like to try the new Muni Metro trains SF Transit Riders has a live map of their locations here.

Muni Murals outside Laguna Honda

May 7th, 2017

About a year ago, the wall facing Forest Hill station at Laguna Honda hospital got the mural treatment. Today I (finally) found myself over there and decided to check it out. Among other aspects, the mural features two fun depictions of Muni over the years that connect the past with the present.

First, here’s a Muni trolley exiting Twin Peaks tunnel at West Portal. This represents the original West Portal station, a glorified bus stop with a facade that looks similar to those of the old piers along the Embarcadero.

Muni Murals

 

The second Muni-themed part of the mural depicts a modern Muni Metro LRV heading to the nearby Forest Hill station. Once known as Laguna Honda Station, it’s the oldest San Francisco subway station that’s still in use today. Regular Muni Metro riders can identify the station’s platform level in the mural by the checkered pattern on the wall. Or you might recognize it from a certain Clint Eastwood movie.

Muni Murals

 
“But wait,” is the question I doubt anyone would ask, “Which Clint Eastwood movie that takes place in San Francisco could you possibly be referring to?” Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for the next blog post to find out. Try not to let the suspense kill you!

Trader Joe’s Muni Metro line

December 28th, 2012

IMG_4614

The express checkout at the Stonestown Trader Joe’s features a painting of a Muni Metro train. After noticing the painting, it immediately raised two questions in my mind:

  1. Why would an artist choose Muni to represent speed?
  2. Where would this “TJ” route go?

While I won’t attempt to answer the first question, I’d like to speculate on the second. The TJ Metro line has to connect all five Trader Joe’s locations in the city. That’s no easy task.

My panel of subway experts concluded that the TJ route will consist of the following:

Outbound stop is Stonestown. Trains head inbound along existing M line through West Portal and Forest Hill. A switch in the Twin Peaks tunnel takes TJ trains to a new side tunnel heading north under Masonic to an underground station at Geary.
 

Inbound trains continue north, turning east to a new California Street subway tunnel. All trains stop at a station under Hyde and California. From here there are two inbound routes. TJ-N trains head north under Hyde street to a terminal at Bay Street. TJ-S trains head south under Hyde to a connection at Civic Center, continuing under 8th St. to a terminal at Bryant.

Sounds good, does it not? I’m getting hungry for cheap wine and frozen pizza just thinking about this. Better get digging, Trader Joe. I have a shovel and a ladder you can borrow.

What?

July 26th, 2011

LOLWUT?

Spotted at Church St. Station.