40 billion and 40 years.....

San Francisco wants to build its biggest subway project ever. Here's what we know.

By Madilynne Medina

San Francisco is proposing its biggest subway project ever, revisiting the corridor where its historic streetcar service all started more than a century ago.

With the proposal, city leaders are resurfacing an idea that has floated around for nearly 75 years — an underground streetcar system along Geary Boulevard, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city.

The San Francisco County Transportation Authority released a community survey in recent months, which closes on Nov. 1, as part of a study exploring a possible Geary and 19th Avenue subway. 

Where would the subway run?

The subway system would connect the Geary downtown corridor to San Francisco’s west side, running through 19th Avenue’s major traffic hubs, such as Stonestown Galleria, past San Francisco State University and stopping at Daly City BART, with multiple connection opportunities to the East Bay and San Mateo County. 

Andrew Heidel, the principal transportation planner with the county’s transportation authority, told SFGATE that the idea is to provide more public transportation to some of the busiest places outside of the city’s downtown area. 

“Being able to connect those activity centers outside of downtown, like UCSF or the Inner Sunset or Japantown and the Fillmore, provides an opportunity to get more transit riders throughout the day, because it’s less just people to and from downtown,” he said.

Why the Geary and 19th Avenue corridor? 

The two major bus lines on the corridor, 38 Geary and 38R Geary Rapid, are some of the most crowded bus lines west of the Mississippi. 

According to the transportation authority, more than 50,000 Muni riders travel through the corridor per day, making it one of the city’s densest areas for transit. If the new subway system is built, the agency expects it to have more than 300,000 riders per day. 

The Geary corridor is also one of the earliest transportation hubs in the city, dating back to 1912. 

With a ride fee of five cents, the first Muni streetcars to ever travel through San Francisco departed on Dec. 28 of that year, bringing passengers to popular areas in the Richmond District, such as Golden Gate Park and Ocean Beach. 

In crowded corridors, underground transportation systems are a “desirable thing,” Allan Fisher, a board chair at the Western Railway Museum, told SFGATE. 

“Any time you can get transportation off the city streets, it’s going to make it more efficient,” he said. 

Why is a Geary subway being proposed now? 

This isn’t the first time a subway has been proposed on the Geary corridor. 

The idea of a rail connection between the west side of San Francisco and downtown has shown up in several places over the years, including the 1956 BART plan, the 1995 Four-Corridors Plan (which planned to connect Bayshore, the Geary Corridor, North Beach and Van Ness Avenue), and the 2017 San Francisco Subway Vision. 

Now, the most recent plan for Geary is part of a bigger transportation initiative, ConnectSF, which includes the county transportation authority, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, San Francisco Planning and the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development. 

The study currently being conducted by the four agencies, which includes the community survey, was requested by SF District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who serves as the vice chair for the county’s transportation authority board.

“The west side still has a long way to go in terms of developing our infrastructure for so many things, including housing and transit, to serve future generations and to help take us along on this climate crisis,” Melgar said in a recorded video played at the July 17 town hall meeting.

On Geary Boulevard, city officials installed new transit lanes between Stanyan Street and 33rd Avenue from November 2020 to February 2021. While the improvements made bus trips approximately 13% faster, according to the agencies, it’s still not enough.

If the subway plan is completed, city leaders working on the plan predict it could create more than 81,000 jobs for individuals with low incomes, reduce crowding on transit trips by 27% and make certain rush hour trips 48% faster. Transit improvements along the corridor have been controversial in the past, with Geary business owners going so far as to stage a mock funeral for lost businesses in 2023, in protest of parking changes that are part of the current Geary Boulevard Improvement Project.

Heidel said improved transit is also necessary for the busy corridor because of the new housing likely to be built in San Francisco. The city is required by a state mandate to permit 82,000 new housing units by 2031 to help address the housing crisis.

“What I’m looking forward to is the key component of this subway being something that’s a part of a bigger network and something that can be resilient into whatever the next 100 years of travel patterns are in San Francisco and can respond to those needs,” he said. 

How is this plan different from others?

Planning teams are hoping to use the new subway system as a connector to existing networks that transport riders in San Mateo County and the East Bay.

“For the first time [we thought] about a subway under Geary as part of not just the rail network in San Francisco, but as part of a more regional rail connection,” Heidel said. 

A new subway under Geary Boulevard could also be paired with a new Transbay rail connection, he added, a planned rail connection to Caltrain. 

City planners believe that expanding the service to San Mateo County and the East Bay will connect BART to important destinations, including UCSF and San Francisco State University, and “bridge the gap” between SF-based jobs and more affordable housing in Alameda and San Mateo. 

“There’s an opportunity to tie those two sorts of important legs of transit together and also make sure that this is an important piece of the entire regional rail system, rather than just the project that people might say only serves San Francisco rather than the entire region,” Heidel said.

He added that the planning team is analyzing subway systems outside of San Francisco and the team can learn from systems in North America, Asia and Europe as they create the new plan for Geary. 

“I think we’re not necessarily trying to be unique,” he said. “… I would prefer, as a planner and a public employee, to use proven things with lessons that have already been learned in other places, and make sure we deliver this most efficiently.”

How long will the project take?

Heidel described the project as a “multi-year, multi-million dollar effort.”

Project construction wouldn’t start for at least 15 years, according to the county’s transportation authority.

In this current phase, city agencies are collecting data and feedback from community members before developing a plan, Heidel said. 

So far, the project has received positive feedback from the community, he said, but one of the top concerns is that people hope the project can “go faster.” 

How much will the project cost?

The price of the project is estimated at more than $20 billion, making cost one of the project’s biggest roadblocks, Heidel said. 

Last year, San Francisco opened its first new subway in more than 40 years, with a service connecting Chinatown and Union Square. Ideas of the project floated around for nearly three decades and the final cost was $1.9 billion. 

“I think the biggest one is that this is a really long-term and really expensive project, and we don’t have funding for it right now,” he said. “In fact, we don’t even really have funding for the immediate next phase of the project at this point.”

Despite the financial challenges, Heidel called the proposed idea a “generational, transformative project” and said hopes that it will continue to move forward. 

“I believe in it and I support it,” he said. “But our elected officials and residents are going to be our actual important decision-makers, and so making sure they’re all involved in the process along the way is going to be really critical.”

Fisher shares similar concerns that there won’t be enough funding to build the subway, but he said believes the project would be positive for the city, if it happens.

“For San Francisco to have such a valuable transportation inside the city is very good,” he said. “People driving automobiles downtown should be a thing of the past.”

A final report of the study and survey is expected to be released later this year or early in 2025.