With the Central Subway under attack just as it nears the federal funding finish line, city officials and business leaders launched a counteroffensive Wednesday, praising the project and attacking its critics.
In a press conference at the project's headquarters on Howard Street, Ed Reiskin, executive director of the Municipal Transportation Agency, and project manager John Funghi were joined by Jim Lazarus, senior vice president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, and David Nadelman, president of the Union Square Business Improvement District.
Reiskin and Funghi defended the Central Subway against its critics, including the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury. Most of the criticism, which has been rekindled by the mayor's race, is the same old stuff being rehashed.
"The questions addressed in the (Grand Jury) report have been asked repeatedly," Funghi said. "It's good to ask, but they've been answered. It's time to move on."
Lazarus lambasted the project's opponents for "politicizing" the project "just because of a mayor's race."
The $1.6 billion project is counting on winning a $942 million full-funding grant agreement from the Federal Transit Administration. MTA officials, who believe they're on track to get the agreement, will submit their final application next week and could hear late this year or early next year if they get the funding guarantee.
Reiskin noted that the project was just awarded $20 million in federal New Starts money, a pot of competitive funding that's hard to snag. He said the project has survived several levels of federal review and that the Central Subway "came through the process as one of the nation's top projects."
Critics have said the project has poor connections to BART and other Muni Metro lines, has already swelled in cost and is so short in length that it isn't worth the price.
But city officials say it will serve the densest and most transit-dependent part of the city, replacing the slow-moving 30-Stockton bus line with a light-rail subway that will connect Chinatown with downtown, South of Market and (incorporating the T-Third line) run out Third Street to Visitacion Valley.
- Michael Cabanatuan
Polling data: Appointed Mayor Ed Lee is maintaining a commanding lead in his bid to be elected to a full term, securing 31 percent of first-choice votes with none of the other serious contenders earning more than 8 percent in the first round, according to a recent poll conducted for his campaign.
The poll by Benenson Strategy Group shows Lee winning after an unspecified number of rounds under the city's ranked-choice voting system, securing 51 percent of the vote while his closest competitors are still below 15 percent.
In that scenario, the three closest runners-up were state Sen. Leland Yee finishing at 14 percent, City Attorney Dennis Herrera at 13 percent and Public Defender Jeff Adachi with 12 percent.
The poll covered 700 likely voters and was conducted Aug. 15-17 - after Lee was blistered for a week by some rivals for abandoning his pledge not to run and for his ties to former Mayor Willie Brown and Chinatown powerbroker Rose Pak.
"They all combined their fire on Mayor Lee at the same time, but they're all just shooting blanks," said Tony Winnicker, Lee's campaign spokesman.
The poll by Joel Benenson, who was President Obama's lead pollster during the 2008 presidential campaign, found that 46 percent of respondents think San Francisco is going in the right direction, with 37 percent saying the city is on the wrong track.
The Benenson poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
Other polling around the same time has shown Lee with a similar lead.
- John Coté
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/07/BA4M1L1KCJ.DTL#ixzz1YSgLX8R2
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