The Facts

District 8 candidate Manny Yekutiel has proposed a 24-mile subway network with four lines: a fully underground T line extended north to the Marina and south to Bayshore, plus new lines under Geary Boulevard, Divisadero Street, and 19th Avenue.

At San Francisco’s recent construction cost of $1.15 billion per mile, Yekutiel estimates the network would cost $27.5 billion. He says standardized stations, automated trains, continuous construction, and a dedicated building authority could cut that to $350 million per mile, or $8.4 billion total. Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, John Mulholland, Omar Rashad, and Maggie Angst at The Standard reported on the proposal.

The Context

The San Francisco County Transportation Authority is already studying a roughly 10-mile Geary and 19th Avenue subway estimated at $20 billion to $30 billion. Yekutiel’s $8.4 billion citywide estimate therefore depends on cutting per-mile costs by nearly 70%, not ordinary efficiencies.

San Francisco's Central Subway cost $1.95 billion for 1.7 miles — about $1.15 billion per mile, against a global average of $406 million per mile across the 755 lines tracked by NYU's Transit Costs Project. Even among American tunneled projects, which average roughly $570 million per mile versus $346 million abroad, that is about double the going rate.

The GrowSF Take

It's a wonderful vision, and we need more Supervisors with the vision to do big things. But given the high price tag and long timeline, let's start with driverless rapid buses on these same lines. We can get 50% of the benefit for 10% of the cost and meaningfully improve the lives of tens of thousands quickly.