Ridership Predictions Lowered, But Subway Plans Move Ahead

The predictions are for the T-Third line, the first phase of the Central Subway project.

"The line now runs from Visitacion Valley down Third Street in the city's southeastern neighborhoods and along the Embarcadero before heading into the Market Street tunnel. The city plans to open a long-promised Central Subway extension into Chinatown in 2018 and hopes the feds will kick in nearly $900 million more to help build the $1.6 billion rail project.

The 'new forecast still places T-Third ridership at a higher level than other rail lines around the nation that are now in design or construction,' Carter Rohan, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's director of capital programs and construction, wrote in a recent memo to the agency's board of directors."