[fflint]

Originally Posted by CharlesCO

This seems to be a growing trend recently. Some armchair transit planner realizes that transit in their city is lacking (surprise surprise), gets a copy of Illustrator, and then starts drawing pretty lines over a map. Someone also made a similarly-looking Squarespace site for an equally implausible idea for a streetcar network in Denver not too long ago, but they then dismissed this site as being too "wonky" for wanting to discuss cost projections and ridership numbers.

A lot of people who do these projects and think they're viable do them more for the zeal of graphic design while not taking into consideration so much how people actually use transit, and they often grossly underestimate the costs of infrastructure investments, if they even take that into consideration at all. Do you think anyone is actually trying to go from the zoo to Balboa Park, or are the majority of people on that side of town really trying to get downtown? Making a line like that would greatly reduce the number of one-seat rides that probably thousands of people already enjoy while creating a line that connects two places that don't really need to be connected. There are so many problems with that plan that it doesn't make any realistic sense.

To me, their biggest (and valid) criticism of there not being enough "true" subway service on the Market subway is something that could, and will, be easily solved with more Castro Shuttle service. It's also buried in the Siemens LRV order press release that the new rail fleet that Muni just ordered will be able to run in up to four car consists, which should result in a dramatic increase in capacity on Muni Metro. This is an example of a reasonable, medium-term investment that produces a cost effective solution without trying to graft the Paris metro onto San Francisco. Though these kinds of projects like Muni's fleet renewal aren't conducive to sexy Squarespace mockup sites or behance likes, I suppose.

Agreed.