#stereoscopy / #stereography views of the #sfmuni #centralsubway

@elliots #Chinatown #Muni

The #CentralSubway station wasn't planned to "improve" The City's transit system. It was a political concession to Rose Park, a C-town community organizer, who wanted something in return for tearing down the Embarcadero Freeway, which previously was the easiest and most direct means to trave; to Chinatown (as well as to most of northeast section of The City, including the Financial District, North Beach, Russian Hill & Fisherman's Wharf) via the Bay Bridge.

My first ride on the Muni Central Subway going to Chinatown today. Stairs! (And escalators that I hope are extremely durable). Glad this is finally in operation. Also a cool Bruce Lee cake I saw on the side of a bakery truck afterwards.
#Muni #CentralSubway #SanFrancisco #PublicTransportation #BruceLee

The #CentralSubway opens this weekend for submarine service.

New Muni maps in the subway showing the central subway #trains #subway #muni #sfmta #CentralSubway

@Eeeszy agreed, there are plenty of households who would love to live #CarFree in San Francisco, and housing in this central location should be prioritized for them.

it's a waste of our investment in the #CentralSubway and #Caltrain to house people here who are going to live next to rail and drive anyway.

Coming January 7th, sourced from 6+ rolls of film and 300+ digital photos.


You’ve never seen the Central Subway like this. #muni #centralsubway #sanfrancisco

https://ridethemetro.co/central-subway


https://ridethemetro.co/central-subway
Coming January 7th, sourced from 7+ rolls of film and 300+ digital photos.

#Muni #CentralSubway #sanfrancisco

Taking the new central subway line during its soft open! :muni: #sanfrancisco #CentralSubway #muni

Another tiny taste of the #Muni #CentralSubway project, coming soon.

Having spent a few hours on the #CentralSubway this weekend, I think the public art budget was very cleverly used. Having bold art and well designed spaces while you are on the long escalators distracts from the long climb/descent.

Congrats to #sanfrancisco on the new #CentralSubway opening! Envious from down here in San Jose, I would love to see us focus on better transit down here and have the city better connected for people who don’t have cars or can’t drive. #transit

Passengers spotted the beer-pong favorite red Solo cups being used as a construction quick-fix at the new multibillion dollar station.

#sanfrancisco #centralsubway #transportation #muni
https://sfstandard.com/transportation/red-party-cup-drainpipe-central-subway/

Chinatown-bound train entering the Union Square station. #sfmuni #chinatown #CentralSubway

Psst. Don't tell anyone, but I snuck into #CentralSubway in #Chinatown to go visit my fren #CalTrain. The #tThird #muni line goes so fast!
#SFMTA

Some Muni Central Subway thoughts that no one asked for

The main argument I've seen in favor of the Central Subway (and more traditional heavy-rail subway and elevated lines) is that it offers increased speed over existing options along the route. While I'm sure this is true, it does beg the questions "Is this the ONLY way to speed up service?" and "Was this extra speed really worth the time and resources?"

If you look only at the portions of Muni that run between 4th & Townsend and Chinatown, then the subway seems like a good option. This, I would hope we can all agree, is a very limited viewpoint. If we instead do the more sensible thing and look at this 1.7 mile stretch of San Francisco as merely a small portion of a much larger whole, the project becomes less defensible.

The two key advantages of street-level transit are access and cost. A service that you can simply walk or roll onto right from the street or sidewalk is always going to be easier to access and cheaper to build and maintain than a tunnel. American transit agencies spend, on average, 35 millon dollars-per-mile when building new light rail service (this is way above what other countries spend, btw). Even at that ridiculous rate, Muni could have built 45 MILES of new light rail (really rebuilt, as most of SF was served by light rail before WWII). A subway supporter might say "Well that would just be 45 miles of slow stuff" but why is surface transit "slow" in the first place? In places with adequate public transit, that might be a more difficult question, but here in 'murka, the answer is simple: cars.

SF, the bay area, and america in general have wayyyyyyyyyyyy to many cars on the road, while our public transit is left to wither and decay, with occasional "uplifts" like the Central Subway. This means that most people have little to no access to practical public transit and only neighborhoods near affluent or tourist areas get any real attention. So what happens when someone needs to go somewhere in SF that Muni doesn't serve well, or doesn't have accessible service to, or doesn't have service at the time needed? They drive, clogging up the roads that buses and streetcars use, slowing down both.

At minimum, Muni Metro (the light rail portion of Muni) has four "legacy" streetcar lines on the table it could restore. It could also upgrade it's service to 100% low-floor vehicles, as it's current fleet is high-floor, and therefore inaccessible to anyone who can't climb stairs at 71 of it's now 100 stops. Even with the comically high amount of money american transit agencies spend on their projects, both of these things could have been accomplished with the amount of money spent on the Central Subway.

So what would have happened if Muni had invested 1.578 BILLION dollars in increasing the density, frequency, and accessibility of it's system city-wide instead of one 1.7 mile tourist tunnel? Fewer people would need to drive, so there would be fewer cars on the road, so the buses and streetcars would be faster, including the ones that go to Chinatown, and new services would open access to far more of the city for far more people.

#muni #SanFrancisco #LightRail #streetcar #streetcars #trolley #trolleys #bus# subway #CentralSubway

Opening day of San Francisco’s Central Subway! Has fun riding the new 1.7 miles of track and exploring the three new underground stations. Here I am on the roofdeck of the Rose Pak station in Chinatown. 💯🚊✨#TotalSF #SanFrancisco #CentralSubway

#muni logo seen through glass roof of the new #chinatownstation #centralsubway #sanfrancisco

I was glad to see a lot of people use the #CentralSubway! Kudos to @SFMTA_Muni staff for making it a pleasant experience today. A few rough edges, but I am looking forward to January full service opening! Thank you! #publictransportation #SFMuni

Another view from the Central Subway railfan window: taking the switch in crossover cavern, southbound from Chinatown station. #transit #transportation #subway #urbanrail #centralsubway #sanfrancisco https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClKeSQJpFz7/