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Originally Posted by quashlo
Are you forgetting the five-minute walk to Embarcadero or Montgomery?
Honestly, I can't see how the 4th/King location would be superior to the current location... First off, BART doesn't come anywhere close to 4th/King and as Zig pointed out, neither do AC Transit or GGT.
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It's superior in that it wouldn't cost $2.4 billion. That is not (yet) Federal money so it is money that COULD be reprogrammed to other transit uses. Think we could get a Geary subway for $2.4 billion? Which would you rather have?
BART doesn't come near 4th & King but 2 Muni Metro lines (T and N) connect 4th and King to the Embarcadero BART station and the Central Subway will connect it to the Powell BART Station.
Since you can also transfer from BART to CalTrain at Milbrae, what our $2.4 billion is getting "us" (meaning those of us who might want to connect from CalTrain or, someday, HSR, to BART) is not needing to make one extra transfer. And remember, the "us" being referred to are mainly peninsula commuters and/or people from the parts of SF served by the few BART stations in the City who might want to take CalTrain somewhere.
None of this seemed worth $2.4 billion to me at the time which is why I was part of the minority who voted "No" on the ballot measure about bringing CalTrain to the TransBay a few years back.
Like I said before, if I were "Emperor of San Francisco", what I'd do would be to eliminate height limits in the TransBay area and let developers like Hines build 1300 ft buildings if they want them there but also leave San Francisco's train station at 4th and King, building THERE a suitable station including, possibly, development such as SPUR is proposing.