Amy Hough Archives — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

› news@sfbg.com

The proposed Central Subway project has arrived at a critical point in its planning stage, with the public comment period for its environmental documents coming to a close Dec. 10 after a series of recent workshops and meetings.

Proponents see the project as an important next stage of the Third Street Light Rail Project and a vital link to Chinatown, which was made less accessible when the Embarcadero Freeway was torn down. But even some transit advocates question whether the project, with a price tag of $1.2–$1.7 billion, has enough bang for the buck to be worth it.

The Central Subway would realize the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s long-standing vision for a subway system that links to the northeast sector of the city, alleviates traffic problems, and improves connections with BART and Caltrain.

This phase of the project, which proposes to connect the South of Market area to Chinatown by underground rail by 2016, has received the fiscal green light — $1.2 billion in state and federal funding is already pledged.

Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, whose District 3 includes Chinatown, called the Central Subway "a very good and wise investment in San Francisco.

"Any investment in public transportation is a good thing," he added. "Is it expensive? Yes. But so were" many other transit projects.

Rose Pak of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, an influential force in San Francisco politics, insists that the Central Subway project is imperative to the Chinatown community.

"It’s long overdue," she told the Guardian. "Over 70 percent of our people rely exclusively on public transit. It’s very important to them. They don’t own cars, but they still need to get here for work, to see friends and family."

But is a 1.7-mile stretch of subway the right priority for and the right way to spend San Francisco’s scarce transportation money? Tom Radulovich, elected BART board member and executive director of Livable City, said making the Central Subway a top priority is a "big mistake."

"If everything else was well with Muni, this might be a good project," he told us. "But we need to take care of first things first."

Radulovich emphasized that improving the existing Muni service is a better step toward resolving San Francisco’s transit problems. He pointed out that using state and federal government money for other projects would go a lot further in improving the overall system. He said the Central Subway project is prematurely being made a priority.

"It’s like trying to build a master bedroom suite on top of a foundation that needs reinforcement. It’s nice, but it doesn’t make much sense," he said.

When asked about the possibility of revamping the Muni bus lines that presently serve Chinatown, Pak explained that the existing bus service already functions at capacity.

"Stockton is one of the busiest streets in San Francisco," she said. "Have you ever tried to ride a bus there at rush hour? It’s almost impossible."

In fact, the project’s Supplemental Environment Impact Report states that bus service already runs at three-minute frequencies or better for most of the Central Subway corridor. It also affirms that the area is operating at capacity, "particularly Stockton Street."

Pak added that the Central Subway would allow for shorter transit times and a "minimum disruption of surface streets."

After the Embarcadero Freeway was disabled by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the decision was made to remove and not replace it. That angered many Chinatown merchants, who became the base of support for the Central Subway project.

At first the group "didn’t have the muscle nor the power," Pak told us. "But our community rallied. We did massive letter writing and postcard writing."

Now challenging the project or raising concerns about its cost or feasibility — which some critics and media reports have done — means doing battle with Pak and the Chinese American community, a substantial voting block. So Mayor Gavin Newsom, Sup. Peskin, and other top elected officials support the project.

At the San Francisco Planning Commission meeting held Nov. 15, David Chiu, a commissioner on the Small Business Commission (and candidate to succeed Peskin as District 3 supervisor), said he was "really looking forward to this project moving forward" but would like to see more detail in the SEIR about the process for relocating small businesses.

Commissioner Michael Antonini "strongly advised" extending the subway as soon as possible to North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf and all the way to the Richmond, arguing the current terminus in Chinatown doesn’t make long-term sense. But few at the hearing argued the project shouldn’t be built.

According to the SEIR, traveling from Fourth Street and King to Chinatown on the Central Subway would cut up to 12.4 minutes from the journey in 2030 — from the bus time projection of 17 minutes to less than five minutes in one subway alignment alternative.

Four "Alignment Alternatives," or designs for how the subway will be built, are laid out in the SEIR, which was released for public review Oct. 17 and made the subject of three community workshops and a Planning Commission hearing.

Options range from enhanced bus service and no subway to one that includes some surface rail along Fourth Street (with a new station at Moscone Center) to an option with more of the route underground and Chinatown stations in various spots.

Once an alignment plan is chosen, the SFMTA will vote on the final design next year. And if things go smoothly, construction on the project could start in 2010 and service begin in 2016.

www.sfmta.com/cms/mcentral/centralover.htm

› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY High-rises are popping up fast in San Francisco, altering the skyline from one month to the next. But are these giants environmentally friendly? Do they make San Francisco more green or less?

One of the major advantages of using tall buildings in city design is the potential to reduce suburban sprawl: building up instead of out lessens the demand for single-family homes, creates dense neighborhoods where cars aren’t needed, and allows for more open spaces to be preserved.

Additionally, the concentration of people in high-rise clusters encourages the creation of acceptable transit systems. "The high density of high-rise neighborhoods — whether residential, office, or mixed-use — creates the necessary population density to support efficient transit service, allowing people to take transit rather than drive," said Lisa M. Feldstein, a local affordable-housing consultant who grew up in a residential high-rise in New York City’s East Harlem. "The reason that bus service is poor in suburbs and rural areas is not that people in those areas don’t like transit. It’s that the population isn’t sufficiently dense to support a fast, frequent, and efficient transit system, so people can’t rely on it."

Density puts demands on transportation, but that doesn’t guarantee public transit use. When people working in city centers like San Francisco can’t afford to live there, that can create cross-commute situations that clog big-city roadways, which may be even more environmentally damaging than suburban-style development. In fact, San Franciscans drive to work alone more than they use public transportation to get there, according to a 2006 US Census Bureau study.

High-density residents tend to use fewer resources than their low-density counterparts. Because walls, pipes, and other materials are shared, it can take less energy, for example, to heat a high-rise unit than a single family home.

But high-rises use energy in ways that single-family homes don’t — for example, in thousands of elevator trips from top to bottom every day. According to a study found on the US Department of Energy’s Web site, elevators consume up to 10 percent of the total energy used to maintain tall buildings. Furthermore, these buildings are usually climate controlled (in part to counteract the heat created by their elevators), whereas opening and closing windows can more effectively regulate temperatures in single-family houses and low-rise units. High-rise buildings also include common areas that often leave lights burning 24 hours a day.

Not having private yards in high-rises reduces the water and the toxic chemicals used to maintain them and forces people into public spaces. But there is another environmental cost to this void, said Lisa Katz, a planner with Design, Community and Environment in Berkeley. "People living in high-rises have less connection to the land; for example, they can’t grow their own food," she said. Raising food sources in agricultural communities and exporting them to cities uses exorbitant amounts of energy in the form of fuel and packaging.

High-rises, however, have the potential to achieve the highest level of green building ratings, according to Maria Ayerdi, executive director of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which on Sept. 20 approved the proposal for the new Transbay Transit tower, which will be the tallest building on the West Coast. "In tall buildings there are creative efficiency, recycling, and energy-generating opportunities that may not be possible in smaller buildings," she said. In fact, several high-rises around the country have been built according to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification standards, which demand energy and resource efficiency.

But Calvin Welch, a local housing activist, said it is "virtually impossible to conceive a green-materials building of any sort" that would meet the seismic requirements of high-rises in San Francisco. These include the use of "heroic construction techniques" involving extraenforced foundations to build on "Bay Area mud," high-tinsel steel, which is packed with carbon and takes loads of energy to produce (often using coal or gas ovens), and thousands of gallons of diesel for the transportation of materials to the city center.

"This is one of the most disastrous building techniques of mankind," Welch said of high-rise housing, noting that "the environmental debt, even if compensated by solar panels, etc., is too great." *

Comments, ideas, and submissions for Green City, the Guardian‘s weekly environmental column, can be sent to news@sfbg.com.

Amy Hough

SF underground

Are high-rises green?