San Francisco's Central Subway Milestone: Tunnel Boring Completed
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — The tunnel for the Central Subway, the first new subway line in almost 50 years in San Francisco, is now completely bored though.
Crews apparently reached the milestone last Wednesday marking the end of an over decade-long effort to dig a 1.7 mile extension that will take the T-Third Street Metro line from AT&T park to Chinatown.
"We got here faster than we thought and pretty much without incident," San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Director Ed Reiskin told the San Francisco Examiner.
The City is marking the accomplishment of at a ceremony Monday morning in North Beach.
The $234 million tunnel-boring project involved carving two tunnels along 4th Street and north under Stockton Street, a southbound one by boring machine "Big Alma" that took about 8 ½ months and a northbound one by "Mom Chung" that started last June and took 11 months.
The Central Subway system, which overall will cost $1.6 billion, isn't scheduled to open to the public until 2019. SFMTA officials are currently studying what it would take to extend the line all the way to Fisherman's Wharf.
KCBS, KPIX-5 and Chronicle Columnist Phil Matier said that such an extension is bound to be marked with controversy.
"One of the things about big transportation projects, wherever they're going, is it only goes as far as people want them to go after some resistance about going further. So we'll have to see where the money and public's attitude is after this one opens." he said.
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