The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) was established in 1999 by a voter mandate. It aggregated several San Francisco city agencies, assuming oversight of public transit, as well as bicycling, paratransit, parking, traffic, walking and taxis and is now the nation’s seventh-largest transit system.

Two recent capital projects demonstrate the SFMTA’s consistent system investments by strengthening San Francisco’s Muni Metro transit system and improving the options available to the communities it serves.

Central Subway Extension

The Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 severed the freeway connection to San Francisco’s Chinatown. Shortly thereafter, then-mayor Willie Brown pledged to restore rail service – which had been absent since 1951 – to the area’s residents.

Central Subway, San Francisco’s first new subway line in more than 40 years, is the fulfillment of that promise. Phase one of the project, completed in 2007, extended light rail to several communities of concern, but still had not reached Chinatown, then the densest community without rail service of any major city in the country. HNTB became involved in 2010 as final designer of the project’s second phase, a 1.7-mile extension that added four new stations, including one in Chinatown.

The November 2022 phase two opening extended the T Third Street light rail line, providing a direct rapid transit link that gives area residents better access to jobs, schools, shopping and sporting and cultural venues. It also provides convenient access to Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and Caltrain, the Bay Area’s two largest regional commuter rail services. In addition to Chinatown, the new line also serves the dense urban areas of Union Square and Market Street.

“Three of the four Central Subway stations are underground,” said Chuck Morganson, HNTB project manager. “This line was built right through the heart of several high-profile, very complex locations. New tunnels had to be excavated and built and utilities had to be moved within an already established framework of existing SFMTA and BART tunnel infrastructure, all without disrupting businesses and traffic flows throughout the area.”

HNTB’s role included conceptual, preliminary and final design, track and systems design, station architecture, design integration, quality assurance and community outreach support.

Service and Mobility Upgrades

Among HNTB’s responsibilities was management of an integrated systems replacement project and engineering to replace the outdated Muni communication systems within the existing metro subway. That work replaced monochrome red signs – that often displayed conflicting and incorrect information – with full-color passenger display train arrival and destination signs.

HNTB identified and implemented project cost savings of more than half a million dollars by reducing track centers and redesigning a special trackwork that replaced a diamond crossover with a universal crossover. Above ground, the changes further permitted tracks to be placed closer together in the street, providing additional width that supports emergency response vehicle access.

SFMTA’s new, state-of-the-art transportation management center, developed as part of the phase two Central Subway project, receives and disseminates real-time information to and from passengers, transit vehicles, field staff and partner transportation agencies. In support of the center’s development, HNTB completed a business process review of SFMTA’s management, operations, architectural and structural design, systems design and integration, scheduling and cost estimating. Capable of conducting real-time transportation management operations across modes and agency borders, the center provides the public with safe, reliable, responsive transportation services.

The opening of the Central Subway extension has, at last, brought vital mobility solutions from the south of the city through to Chinatown residents. Projected to serve more than 76,500 daily riders by 2030, the Central Subway accommodates both existing and future transit ridership with greater reliability, comfort and speed.

“HNTB has been a trusted and valued partner to SFMTA on the Central Subway contract for over 12 years. Their design support and timely responsiveness during construction has helped us move the project towards successful completion,” said Nadeem Tahir, SFMTA, program director, Central Subway Project. “As project manager, Chuck Morganson has been outstanding and has provided real value, bringing us the right people at the right time through final design and the complex trackwork and systems installation and testing phases.”

“Van Ness was more than a transit project, in a sense,” said Keiran Kelly-Sneed, HNTB client service leader. “It also was a sewer and water project. San Francisco is an old city with utilities in this area that are more than 100 years old. Since the streets needed to be dug up to create the bus lanes, the SFMTA recognized the once-in-a-generation opportunity to reconstruct the infrastructure beneath the bus lanes, as well. About half of the time required to complete the project involved these improvements that weren’t directly related to bus operations.”

The bus lanes were built after the completion of curb-to-curb utility replacements. Construction presented its own challenges, particularly with limited access to constrained sites along the corridor that were impacted by traffic control, limited work hours, ingress/egress, public safety and other concerns.

The COVID-19 pandemic, while introducing unprecedented challenges, also reduced traffic on the roadway, allowing the project team to gain access to larger portions of the corridor. In particular, the Mission intersection, a major, diamond-shaped connection point where five well-traveled city streets converged, benefited from those reduced traffic levels.