Can San Francisco Build More Subways? Professor McDaniel Comments

KQED NEWS FIX -- Close to a year ago, San Francisco voters approved two funding measures aimed at improving city’s transportation over the next 15 years. Those efforts, called Transportation 2030, provide a roadmap for a number of transit upgrades, but don’t include subway expansions. Meantime, money is not the only roadblock. “Robust and continual subway construction will provoke resistance from many groups,” said Jason McDaniel, an assistant professor of Political Science at San Francisco State. Businesses and people who would be impacted by that work are bound to fight against underground train projects, as many did for the Central Subway, McDaniel said. But the push for subway expansion is a “vision that captures the desires of transit advocates and interested citizens for robust public investment in a world-class transit system that can potentially shape the future of the city,” McDaniel said in an e-mail.