As the Central Subway’s earth-devouring machines extend the tunnels toward the Chinatown terminus and the North Beach site where they’ll be yanked from the ground, a group of transit advocates, neighborhood activists and business interests are pushing for a station in North Beach and an extension to Fisherman’s Wharf. Opponents, of course, are still pressing for the subway to be stopped, or at least for the tunnel boring machines to be parked in Chinatown and buried in place. But supporters of an extension, who are operating under the name SF NexTstop (the capital T, cleverly, is for the T line that will run in the subway) say taking the line north to the Wharf makes sense.

Construction workers prepare a section of curved retaining wall for installation inside the northbound tunnel of Muni’s Central Subway project.

“Without this last link, the Central Subway can never fully deliver on its promises of connectivity, improved commerce or reductions in surface congestion,” the group says in a statement on its website (sfnextstop.org). “We need to complete the Central Subway.” The group, which includes members of community groups from Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, Russian Hill, SouthBeach as well as the Chamber of Commerce, assembled last year after SPUR — the San Francisco urban planning nonprofit, conducted a workshop on the possibility of extending the subway to the wharf. “The consensus was, yeah, we’ve got to build it — now,” said Julie Christensen, a North Beach resident and the group’s spokeswoman. “We decided we needed to get out there and advocate.”

Surprisingly, even though a lot of people talk about the possibility of an extension to the Wharf, it’s not on any planner’s or agency’s list as a project. Christensen said she believes her group has made progress in getting the San Francisco County Transportation Authority and the Municipal Transportation Agency to consider it an official project — and not a mere dream — and begin studies. “I think they were so burned by the Central Subway, by the animosity over it, that everyone thought it was Willie Brown and Rose Pak’s project, that they didn’t want to go through that again,” she said. “But we are seeing a welling up of support. We are trying to get the project fully evaluated.” Once that happens, she said, a Central Subway extension could compete for city and federal funding. And someday, perhaps, tourists and commuters, could take a train instead of the always-crowded 30-Stockton.

By Michael Cabanatuan

http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/03/11/pushing-the-central-subway-to-fishermans-wharf/