Muni's current plans for the Central Subway project should be a scrapped, concludes a San Francisco Civil Grand Jury report released this morning.
The project has the strong backing of San Francisco's elected officials and federal delegation but has been long criticized by a core of transit activists as a waste of money and a strain on the current system.
Mayor Ed Lee dismissed the concerns raised by the Civil Grand Jury and other naysayers, saying they're a rehash of issues that already have been debated and addressed. ''I'm behind the project 100 percent, 150 percent,'' Lee said today. ''It's a solid project that will help people get around our city.''
But that's not the view of the Civil Grand Jury, which said the rail extension into Chinatown would add to Muni's existing operating deficit and ''could stretch the existing maintenance environment to the breaking point.''
The Central Subway extension also could further exacerbate Muni's on-time performance rate, the court-appointed civil grand jury, a citizens' investigative panel, concluded after its seven-month investigation.
In addition, the 1.7-mile rail line's projected costs have escalated over the years -- starting at $648 million in 2003 and rising to nearly $1.6 billion today -- and could continue to increase before its estimated opening in 2019.
The grand jury also disparaged the proposed route, saying it could have better served the Financial District as well as Chinatown had it used the Kearny Street corridor instead of Stockton Street. The fact that there is no seamless connection to BART or other Muni rail lines also drew concern.
''The Civil Grand Jury concludes that the project must be redesigned,'' its report stated.
The report comes out at a critical time for the project. The federal government has awarded Muni just under $96 million to date to build the Central Subway, and now Muni is waiting to find out whether it will get a full funding agreement with the feds, bringing the total contribution to $966 million. A decision is expected by the end of the year.
The state would kick in another $488 million, and local sales tax revenue would account for another $124 million.
Criticism of the Central Subway is not new. A group of transit activists has been trying to derail the project for years, saying that the riding public would benefit more with expanded and more efficient -- and less costly -- bus service serving Chinatown.
Activists also have said that if the Muni Metro rail system were to be expanded, service along the Geary Boulevard corridor in the Richmond District would make more sense.
But city officials, including Lee and his predecessors in the mayor's office, the Board of Supervisors and Municipal Transportation Agency officials, have made the Central Subway a top priority.
They say it will fill a big need in Chinatown, among the densest urban neighborhoods in the United States whose residents and businesses rely heavily on public transit.
Posted By: Rachel Gordon (Email) | July 07 2011 at 11:14 AM
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?entry_id=92709#ixzz1RU1RegKg
No comments:
Post a Comment