With the Central Subway finalized and out of the way, the MTA can finally start talking about what they weren't supposed to before: the extension to North Beach.
According to Dave Snyder, the transpo guy at think tank SPUR, formally discussing an extension for the subway line beyond Chinatown would have risked having the project considered "misrepresented ... as smaller than it actually is" by the Federal Transportation Authority, since the original proposal had no talk of North Beach.
Politics, friends. Politics. But now that the FTA has already signed off on the project, we can talk all we want about North Beach. For one thing, the MTA's already planning on taking its tunnel-boring machine out where a possible North Beach station might be— so why not, many ask, just bore the damn thing?
Bore it! But why stop there? If you've got rainbows in your eyes like the chair of SPUR's Central Subway Task Force, the line will one day extend through North Beach, west past Van Ness along Lombard, and into the Marina and Cow Hollow. Cue wistful sigh.
