SF Muni Third Street light rail project

Hello everyone,

As many of you may know, Muni Metro currently has a new 5.4 mile light rail extension under construction on Third Street in Eastern San Francisco. This new light rail line will replace the 15 diesel bus route on Third Street between Fourth and King Streets and Visitacion Avenue.

You can read and learn more about the Third Street light rail extension at http://www.sfmuni.com/rid/const/3rdover.htm

Arthur Thomas

Sounds like fun. I'll be in the city on Sunday, and I'll try to get some pictures. Say, what's a good (free) place to post trolley pics?

Speaking of the Third Street Light Rail, I have some other questions...

-What will it be called on the route signs?
-Will it operate in the tunnel to Castro?
-How come there was not a spur built for Candlestick service? This seems to be a no brainer in terms of getting people to not drive to games. Remember: 'Don't drive it. Transit!'

Also, notice the little jog in the Central Subway Tunnel at Geary? This is where the proposed (read: future) B - Geary Light Rail will tunnel to Laguna and continue surface to the Pacific.

Right now the plan is to extend the J-Church line down third street to Bayshore. This means that the train will operate in the Market Street Subway from the Embarcadero to the Duboce Portal. The line will continue on to the Balboa Park BART station and the Green Light Rail Center. The N-Judah will operate from Ocean Beach to the Caltrain station only. When development in the corridor increases the N-Judah will be extended down 3rd street to the 18th Street loop. A new line will most likely be created when the Central Subway opens upon the completion of phase two of the project.

- C.R.

> How come there was not a spur built for Candlestick service?

One "hidden" feature of Bay Area transit is the use of shuttle buses. Many of the Caltrain, BART, ACE and Amtrak (commuter) stations have a number (like around 300) of shuttle buses, primarily used for commuters. Since they are subsidized by taxpayers, they are technically open to anyone, not just the employers who promote, and also partially pay for them.

Since 3-Com no longer hosts baseball, there are only a few dozen events a year, half of them football games. This makes 3-Com a natural for shuttle buses. Muni, and a few other transit systems have specials for football - http://www.sf49ers.com/fan_zone/traffic.asp

Most likely, Muni will add shuttles from Gilman or LeConte, and, possibly keep the special buses from downtown SF.

It seems that MUNI is taking a page from tha BMT's All-four playbook. Read more about All-four here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-four