The Geary Subway is a proposed rail tunnel underneath Geary Boulevard in San Francisco, California. Several plans have been put forward as early as the 1930s to add a grade separated route along the corridor for transit. San Francisco Municipal Railway bus routes on the street served 52,900 daily riders in 2019, the most of any corridor in the city.
The Geary Street, Park and Ocean Railway began operating cable cars on Geary starting in 1880. [1] San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) acquired the corridor as its first streetcar line, opening in 1912. The agency's A Geary-10th Avenue, B Geary, C Geary-California, and D Geary-Van Ness lines traversed the street. Rail service ended in 1956 and trips were replaced with buses. [2] By 2008 the 38 Geary and 38R Geary Rapid constituted Muni's most heavily used bus line in the city with over 50,000 passengers per day. [3]
By the 1930s, Geary was the city's most congested transit corridor. City Engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy proposed a streetcar subway under the road as far as Larkin Street. [2] A report in 1935 recommended a tunnel under Geary as well as subway routes under Market Street and Mission Street for removing operations from the surface. The Geary route included 2.5 miles (4.0 km) of tunnel under Geary Street starting at Hamilton Square in the west, turning north under Montgomery Street and surfacing at Washington Street onto Columbus Avenue — it would have connected with existing surface tracks at its ends. This route was projected to cost between $13.6 million and $16 million (between $302 million to $356 million in 2023 adjusted for inflation [4] ). [5] Voters suffering from the Great Depression did not have a desire for such a municipal expenditure. [2]
Part of the original plan for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system was a line beginning Downtown and running under Post Street before turning north to run across the Golden Gate Bridge. The subway tunnel would connect to the trunk line under Market Street near Montgomery Street and briefly surface near Maple Street and Post before entering another tunnel in the Presidio of San Francisco. [6] When Marin County pulled out of the transit district, some plans called for a subway only extending to the Richmond District, but these were soon scrapped.
In 1989, the city of San Francisco approved Proposition B, a ballot measure that approved a half-cent sales tax for transportation. The expenditure scheme that was included in the proposition prioritized the planning and implementation of transit expansion along four transit corridors, including Geary Boulevard. [7] Subsequently, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) conducted a study, titled the Four Corridor Plan, to determine the details of the transportation improvements along the corridors outlined in Proposition B. The study called for a subway-surface rail line along Geary, running on the surface as far east as Laguna Street and underground to either the Financial District or South of Market. [8] When the tax was extended in the early 2000s, the project was changed to focus on implementing bus rapid transit features along the corridor. Dedicated bus lanes were opened along Geary as a result of COVID-19 pandemic service changes in early 2021. [9] [10]
In 1995, the San Francisco Municipal Railway hired Merrill & Associates to study the possibility of building a new BART subway beneath Geary in conjunction with adding light rail on the surface. The estimated cost of construction as far as Park Presidio Boulevard was $1.4 billion in 1995 ($2.8 billion in 2023 adjusted for inflation). Projections from this study put BART ridership at 18,000 daily boardings, and the alignment would allow for a further extension to Marin. These plans were dropped, according to former Senator Quentin L. Kopp, due to merchant and resident opposition, citing potential blight similar to that caused by Market Street subway construction two decades earlier. [11]
Ongoing studies will determine whether the corridor may one day be served by future BART service. A Geary Subway may be constructed as an extension of the second Transbay Tube. [12] [11]
A new study was undertaken after release of the 2021 ConnectSF Transit Strategy plan to establish a new rail route to connect Downtown and Daly City via Geary and 19th Avenue. [13]
The San Francisco Municipal Railway ( MEW-nee; SF Muni or Muni), is the primary public transit system within San Francisco, California. It operates a system of bus routes, the Muni Metro light rail system, three historic cable car lines, and two historic streetcar lines. Previously an independent agency, the San Francisco Municipal Railway merged with two other agencies in 1999 to become the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). In 2018, Muni served 46.7 square miles (121 km2) with an operating budget of about $1.2 billion. Muni is the seventh-highest-ridership transit system in the United States, with 142,168,200 rides in 2023, and the second-highest in California after the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Muni Metro is a semi-metro system serving San Francisco, California, United States. Operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), a part of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), Muni's light rail lines saw an average of 75,500 boardings per day as of the first quarter of 2024 and a total of 24,324,600 boardings in 2023, making it the sixth-busiest light rail system in the United States.
The L Taraval is a hybrid light rail/streetcar line of the Muni Metro system in San Francisco, California, mainly serving the Parkside District. Since 2021, the line has been suspended and replaced by buses until the end of 2024 for an improvement project along Taraval Street.
The M Ocean View is a light rail line that is part of the Muni Metro system in San Francisco, California. Named after the Oceanview neighborhood, it runs between San Jose and Geneva and Embarcadero station, connecting Oceanview, San Francisco State University, and Stonestown Galleria with the city center. The line opened on October 6, 1925.
The K Ingleside is a hybrid light rail/streetcar line of the Muni Metro system in San Francisco, California. It mainly serves the West Portal and Ingleside neighborhoods. The line opened on February 3, 1918, and was the first line to use the Twin Peaks Tunnel.
The J Church is a hybrid light rail/streetcar line of the Muni Metro system in San Francisco, California. The line runs between Embarcadero station and Balboa Park station through Noe Valley. Opened on August 11, 1917, it is the oldest and has the lowest ridership of all of the Muni Metro lines.
Embarcadero station is a combined BART and Muni Metro rapid transit subway station in the Market Street subway in downtown San Francisco. Located under Market Street between Drumm Street and Beale Street near The Embarcadero, it serves the Financial District neighborhood and surrounding areas. The three-level station has a large fare mezzanine level, with separate platform levels for Muni Metro and BART below. Embarcadero station opened in May 1976 – almost two years after service began through the Transbay Tube – as an infill station.
Montgomery Street station is a combined BART and Muni Metro rapid transit subway station in the Market Street subway in downtown San Francisco. Located under Market Street between Montgomery Street and Sansome Street, it serves the Financial District neighborhood and surrounding areas. The three-level station has a large fare mezzanine level, with separate platform levels for Muni Metro and BART below. Montgomery Street and Embarcadero station to the north are typically the two busiest stations in the BART system.
The Twin Peaks Tunnel is a 2.27-mile-long (3.65 km) light rail/streetcar tunnel in San Francisco, California. The tunnel runs under Twin Peaks and is used by the K Ingleside, L Taraval, M Ocean View and S Shuttle lines of the Muni Metro system.
The Market Street subway is a two-level subway tunnel that carries Muni Metro and BART trains under Market Street in San Francisco, California. It runs under the length of Market Street between Embarcadero station and Castro station. The upper level is used by Muni Metro lines and the lower level is used by BART lines. BART does not run through the whole subway; it turns south and runs under Mission Street southwest of Civic Center/UN Plaza station. The northeastern end of the BART level is connected to the Transbay Tube. On the Muni Metro level, the southwestern end of the Market Street subway connects to the much-older Twin Peaks Tunnel, and the northeastern end connects to surface tracks along the Embarcadero.
Geary Boulevard is a major east–west 5.8-mile-long (9 km) thoroughfare in San Francisco, California, United States, beginning downtown at Market Street near Market Street's intersection with Kearny Street, and running westbound through downtown, the Civic Center area, the Western Addition, and running for most of its length through the predominantly residential Richmond District. Geary Boulevard terminates near Sutro Heights Park at 48th Avenue, close to the Cliff House above Ocean Beach at the Pacific Ocean. At 42nd Avenue, Geary intersects with Point Lobos Avenue, which takes through traffic to the Cliff House, Ocean Beach and the Great Highway. It is a major commercial artery through the Richmond District; it is lined with stores and restaurants, many of them catering to the various immigrant groups who live in the area. The boulevard borders Japantown between Fillmore and Laguna Streets.
People in the San Francisco Bay Area rely on a complex multimodal transportation infrastructure consisting of roads, bridges, highways, rail, tunnels, airports, seaports, and bike and pedestrian paths. The development, maintenance, and operation of these different modes of transportation are overseen by various agencies, including the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the Association of Bay Area Governments, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. These and other organizations collectively manage several interstate highways and state routes, eight passenger rail networks, eight trans-bay bridges, transbay ferry service, local and transbay bus service, three international airports, and an extensive network of roads, tunnels, and bike paths.
38 Geary is a bus line operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni). Together with the limited service routes that share the number, the 38R Geary Rapid, 38AX Geary 'A' Express, and 38BX Geary 'B' Express, the Geary Boulevard corridor makes up Muni's busiest thoroughfare.
The Geary Bus Rapid Transit project added bus rapid transit features to San Francisco Municipal Railway bus lines along Geary Boulevard. The corridor serves routes 38, 38R, 38AX, 38BX which combined to serve 52,900 daily riders in 2019, the most of any corridor in the city. The project added transit-only lanes, painted red, along many sections of Geary between the Transbay Transit Center and 33rd Avenue. After the project’s completion, over 75% of Geary corridor now has transit lanes.
Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit is a bus rapid transit (BRT) corridor on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco, California, United States. The 1.96-mile (3.15 km) line, which runs between Mission Street and Lombard Street, has dedicated center bus lanes and nine stations. It was built as part of the $346 million Van Ness Improvement Project, which also included utility replacement and pedestrian safety features. Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit is used by several San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) lines including the 49 Van Ness–Mission, as well as three Golden Gate Transit routes.
Throughout the history of Bay Area Rapid Transit, there have been plans to extend service to other areas.
The Portal, also known as the Downtown Rail Extension (DTX), is a planned second phase of the San Francisco Transbay Transit Center (TTC). When complete, it will extend the Caltrain Peninsula Corridor commuter rail line from its current northern terminus at 4th and King via a 1.3-mile (2.1 km) tunnel. The new terminus will be near the Financial District and will provide intermodal connections to BART, Muni, Transbay AC Transit buses, and long-distance buses. In addition, the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) plans to use DTX and the Caltrain-owned Peninsula Corridor for service on the CHSRA San Francisco–San Jose segment. Because DTX uses a long tunnel, current diesel locomotives are not suitable and the Caltrain Modernization Project (CalMod), which includes electrification of the line and acquisition of electrified rolling stock, is a prerequisite.