Howard has an excellent idea. And Ziggy’s proposed shuttle between Chinatown and Market seems like an obvious thing to do.

The traffic for buses on 4th and 3rd Streets is not extremely bad, especially with the diamond lane for the buses. I don’t really see a true need for a subway on the stretch between CalTrain and Market. CalTrain will be extending their system to Transbay Terminal (hopefully) and that would take care of a route down 4th. I don’t see why the Central Subway doesn’t just run from Market Street up to North Beach and use the money that would be spent in SOMA in North Beach.

Also, in many cities throughout the world, most of the underground stations are not very deep underground. Most local stations in Manhattan have side platforms and are only one level below the street. There is no mezzanime and the faregates are on the platforms. Of course, in order to change platforms, one would have to exit the station onto the street and cross above ground and then re-enter the station, but it seems much cheaper than trying to dig very deep underground. Perhaps the tunnel could go above the Muni station instead. There would be less escalators needed to get to and from the platforms.

BRT down Stockton seems like a feasible alternative since BRT is easy to implement and will have immediate results. It doesn’t take as long to build like train lines do. I think Muni should definitely look into this option, because if BRT is built properly, it can be just effective as a subway, if not even more because it allows several lines to enter the bus lanes at once.

Anyhow, I hope Muni chooses the best alternative that is the most effective because we are definitely in need of transit improvements. Too bad we got rid of all the streetcars in the 50s… We could be still riding the B Geary line or the F Stockton.

The more I think of it the more I like an elevated LRV line from Fourth just south of King to at least Bryant. Whose scenic views will be blocked by such a thing? Almost nobody’s. And service would be tons faster. Perhaps the Safeway and Caltrain stations would like an upper level entrance from the streetcars as well.

With that obstacle out of the way, a surface-level light rail line in dedicated lanes is probably the way to go, running straight up Fourth to Stockton. Fourth Street is certainly wide enough to be able to take two lanes out without too much trouble. There’d probably be one intermediate station between King and Market, maybe at Folsom. At Market, there would be a station on the south side where the bus stop is now, then on Stockton another station to provide transfers to the eventual Geary line. Then a quick run through the tunnel, and into Chinatown, where Stockton can be dedicated excusively to pedestrians, light rail, and commercial vehicles going to unload their cargo. The first phase of the line can end at Columbus, for easy transfers from the 20 and 41, and the line can continue easily enough onto Columbus.

It would all run at least as fast as BRT, and true level boarding through multiple doors should speed things up a bit. Plus, unlike BRT, you can run two and three car trains on such a line, and get a whole lot more capacity while still maintaining reliable headways. And if there’s still not enough line capacity, then you can start thinking about putting parts of it underground.