San Francisco Subway Plans Blasted

Just the initial math makes your head hurt. Basically it works out to somewhere between $1.22 billion and $1.4 billion for an underground railway that runs for less than two miles and has only three stops. That's not a transit system, it's a model railroad.

When completed, the short spur would run from Fourth and Brannan, under Market Street and up Stockton Street to a station in the middle of Chinatown, a distance of 1.7 miles. Throw in a few of the inevitable cost overruns and this could work out to a billion dollars a mile.

City officials know this sounds hefty, of course, but provide stats and figures to suggest that it isn't out of line with other projects. It is less than BART to the San Francisco Airport, for example. (Although it could be argued that there was a greater need for a rapid transit alternative to the airport than to the center of Chinatown.)