Central Subway

The Central Subway Project is Phase 2 of the Third Street Light Rail Project that will link Little Hollywood and Visitación Valley with SoMa (South of Market), Moscone Center, Union Square and Chinatown. The pictures below are renderings of the future stations.

Central Subway will serve regional destinations including Chinatown, Yerba Buena and AT&T Park.

    

    

    

For general information about Central Subway please refer to the Central Subway Fact Sheet (PDF) or the accessible version of the Central Subway Fact Sheet (PDF).

The project will:

• Improve regional connections to Caltrain, BART and Muni
• Serve a low auto ownership population of transit customers
• Increase transit use and reduce travel time
• Achieve the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) transit service and mobility goals
• Be compatible with local, regional and state planning initiatives
• Reduce air and noise pollution
• Provide congestion relief

If you cannot view the video by clicking on the image, view the Central Subway overview video directly at the video Web site.

Transcript of the Central Subway overview video.

Interactive map of the preferred alignment

Virtual animation of a typical station

If you cannot view the video by clicking on the image, view the station visualization video directly at the video Web site.

Transcript of the station visualization video.

The Central Subway is Phase 2 the SFMTA’s Third Street Light Rail Program, one of the most significant capital investments for the nation’s seventh largest transit system. Phase 1 of the 6.8 -mile project, the T Third Line, began operating in April 2007 and restored light rail service to the low auto ownership population along the Third Street corridor of San Francisco for the first time in 50 years.

The Central Subway will provide rail service into Chinatown, the most densely populated area of the country not currently served by modern rail transportation. The new, 1.7 -mile light rail line will serve regional destinations including Chinatown, Union Square, Moscone Convention Center, Yerba Buena, SoMa and AT&T Park, as well as connect to BART and Caltrain, the Bay Area’s two largest regional commuter rail services.

The majority of funding for the Central Subway will be provided by the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) New Starts program, with a total commitment over the life of the project of $948.4 million. Environmental clearance of the project was granted by the FTA in November 2008 and construction is scheduled to begin in early 2010 with utility relocation. The Central Subway is slated to open to the public in 2018.

A construction approach called “deep tunneling” will be used to construct the Central Subway. Deep tunneling allows most of the work to be done below ground, reducing disruption on the surface. The tunneling will be accomplished with a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM), a technology that has been used extensively throughout the world. Deep tunneling has great potential for controlling project costs by minimizing surface construction staging, reducing utility relocations and shortening construction time.

The only visible tunneling activity will occur at the portal construction location (4th Street between Bryant and Harrison streets) and at the excavation site (Columbus Avenue at Union Street).

If you cannot view the video by clicking on the image, view the deep tunneling video directly at the video Web site.

Transcript of the deep tunneling video.