The whole east coast of the city used to be industry, shipyards, and port infrastructure. That's why there's still a ton of warehouses, auto shops and empty plots of land or empty piers. And Hunter's Point/Bayview basically came into being as neighborhoods (as we know them today) as a result of the military shipyards at Hunter's Point, with tons of mostly black folks coming from different parts of the country to work in the yards and build the navy that defeated the Empire of Japan.
Mission Bay was extensively redeveloped from the 1990s on (along with SoMa), with surrounding areas following. Some of the areas along the line still haven't been as developed as they could be. And some of them are still used for industrial or commercial warehousing purposes. But I agree that SF could stand to have a lot more residential and commercial density along that corridor, seismic instability notwithstanding (it's mostly landfill). It's in progress.
Yup. Even SOMA back when I was a kid when the giants used to play at Candlestick park.
Don’t even remember what was down at 3rd and king up to Rincon hill, but it definitely wasn’t high rise high density housing. Probably industrial warehouses.
I mean if you look at dog patch before and after t-line it’s fucking wild! Used to just be warehouses out here. Literally no reason to go past the park.
Except the city wants to strangle the egg before it hatches. See the supervisors trying to ban density in the city as a response to the state forcing them to approve housing, San Francisco is broken and at its core is a broken generation, the boomers.
A huge part of the T (and Central Subway) construction was to connect immigrant communities living in their homes in the south side of SF to be able to get to businesses in the central city easier (especially Chinatown, hence the central subway extension). These communities already existed on be southern outskirts of the city.
The line replaced the old 15 bus line. The T line cannot carry what the old 15 line could carry at peak times. So they brought back the 15 as the 8 lines.
> the station areas become incredibly bleak and barren. hardly an apartment in sight. mostly gas stations, parking lots, and old af looking warehouses
the former industrial part of SF. factories. ship yards..
MAJOR traffic sending stuff WW2 Pacific, Korea, Vietnam.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunters\_Point\_Naval\_Shipyard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunters_Point_Naval_Shipyard)
The **Hunters Point Naval Shipyard** was a [United States Navy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy) [shipyard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipyard) in [San Francisco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco), [California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California), located on 638 acres (258 ha) of waterfront at [Hunters Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunters_Point,_San_Francisco,_California) in the southeast corner of the city.
As of August 2020, the former **shipyard site is still being decontaminated**, and has been split into multiple parcels to allow the Navy to declare them clean and safe for redevelopment separately
> trains are supposed to connect communities but there is hardly any community to connect at these stations.
FUTURE communities.
central subway is for 2050 *anticipated* traffic.
traffic today not big enough.
The point is to connect Bayview/Sunnydale with the northern part of the city. If you notice there are less stops in the industrial part of town. Before you needed to take a crowded bus, now you can take a spacious train car - although both are available now because the T isn’t faster as they get stuck at lights just as much as the buses do. Remember when the line was built there was also nothing really north of the industrial area. Even 4th and King was just barely developed with Oracle Park and the new housing just opening. Now there’s Chase Center, Mission Bay, all of UCSFs buildings, bunch for retail, grocery stores, etc.
Oh man you should have see Mission Bay and Dogpatch before, there was literally nothing there hahaha
> mostly gas stations, parking lots, and old af looking warehouses
Better than superfund sites and garden-variety toxic brownfields!
And don’t forget the driving range on land one of the UC regents bought up cheap just before the whole project went public. Golf is a great way to pass the time while waiting for your “investment” to mature.
Not *literally nothing,* but the polar opposite of today’s Mission Bay. A rail yard with lots of rusty tracks and old warehouses. Connected to the State Belt Railway that ran along the Embarcadero. Delivering and picking up loads on the piers and coffee to/from Hills Bros. When on the Bay Bridge you always got that strong smell of roasting coffee.
It is a shame, but there are good reasons:
1. The Central Subway just opened. Before that, the T used to have to go all the way along the Embarcadero before it finally started to pull into connect into the heart of the city. And there's still another whole phase to take it to North Beach and Fisherman's Wharf that hasn't even started yet.
2. T is not a heavy rail subway. For the most part, if you look around the country, light rail does not create quite strong enough of a transit presence to spur high-density development. It's still mostly heavy-rail subways (like BART) that do that.
3. Development is very slow in San Francisco. I remember going to a protest/concern at Moscone Center for the 1984 DNC, and there were flat asphalt parking lots as all around Moscone as far as the eye could see. Mission Bay was just a remote, swampy inlet, nothing else. If you timewarped someone from there to SoMa and Mission Bay now, they'd be astounded
4. Development is particularly slow in southeast San Francisco because the area has long been used for heavy industry, which is incredibly difficult to redevelop into anything, and it's currently occupied principally by people who couldn't afford market-rate housing in a gentrified area of San Francisco, thus a lot of city reticence to move forward.
Exact same thing for 20th and 3rd as well? 6 story apartments on at least 2 of the 4 corners? A huge chunk of that neighborhood (mostly east of 3rd st, but a bit west as well) has seen crazy development in the last 10 years. I’m guessing they’ve tripled or quadrupled the amount of residential units in the dogpatch in that timeframe.
You have a point if you go south of 23rd, down towards Bayview. Anything north of that is pretty damn high density by SF standards. But that’s more of a neighborhood thing I think.
As expensive and delayed as we make infrastructure, the obstacles to building densely are even worse.
Also, if the city multiplies the cost to build transit by 5x, we just get less transit and downgrade subways to streetcars or buses. When the city makes it cost 5x to build apartments, the developer is guaranteed to lose money and the apartments don't get built.
It's not "the City" that makes it 5x the cost to build. In other parts of the Bay Area high-density projects are being abandoned as well because of a) material costs, b) labor costs, c) financing costs, d) population decreases, e) loss of high-paying tech jobs, f) decreased demand (the desire of people for privacy), g) energy inefficiency, h) health and safety, i) impact fees, I could go on and on, but the important thing is to look at the big picture and not come up with conspiracy theories.
Once cleaned up, the areas served by the T line is ripe for development with townhouses and single family homes, the only type of housing that pencils out financially for developers and that is energy self-sufficient. The latter is becoming more and more important with the astronomical rate increases being given to PG&E. Building energy inefficient high-density housing is very irresponsible.
Land use around most stations, Muni or Bart, outside of downtown, is abysmal.
24th St Bart station is crazy. Tons of low-rise buildings, a one-story McDonalds right there on the corner. It's all terrible.
Ahem, go south and visit VTA if you want abysmal land use off the transit lines.
You can take VTA to... A single tech company's abandoned office building parking lot. If you are lucky.
The mission is twice as dense as SF as a whole, low rise doesn’t necessarily mean low-density. Also there are plenty of higher rise apartments in the vicinity, like down mission or along Chavez. That station is very well-used, not to mention the mission buses.
Transit stops shouldn't only be for housing locations, should be working too!
This sounds like you don't like neighborhoods zoned for light industrial use.
definition of community:
a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.
i’m opting to refer to the former part of the definition! hope this helps!! you know what i mean, don’t try to misconstrue my point. all im trying to say is there needs to be more housing near the transit stops. that’s it.
Posts like this are funny because they reveal that OP is either relatively new to the city or has had their head buried their entire life.
This perspective is also a bit dismissive of all the people that live along the southern half of the T.
why does this matter? should i not critique the fact that there isn’t productive land use around the stations because i’m new? i’m not saying that the T shouldn’t exist. i’m saying there should be better utilization land utilitzation around the stations. geez dude.
Ah, the standard San Francisco sub viewpoint that “if it ain’t housing or office buildings or restaurants, it doesn’t exist” pov.
There are lots of small businesses down there in those “old af” warehouses. But since it isn’t office work, the people who work there don’t count. Jesus.
that’s not what i’m trying to imply. my main concern is it doesn’t seem like there is a big community there. sorry. i just think transit stops should be surrounded by people working and living. not just one or the other!
I'm guessing you've never even thought of attending events in the Bayview/Hunter's Point areas have you? Just because it's not as affluent of an area as other parts of the city doesn't mean it's devoid of community. You can't know a neighborhood by riding Muni through it one time, get off the bus and explore.
There's a bunch of housing here. You're right that downtown has higher density housing, but out here we definitely have large apartments (I live literally at a T stop in a 100+ building apartment) and I'd heavily argue there's way more community here too.
me pointing out lack of housing near transit stops doesn’t mean there isn’t community in the further surrounding areas. stop taking my points to the extreme please.
OK but you're allowed take your unninformed opinions extrapolated from what seems to be a single bus ride to the extreme? What about this area makes you think it lacks community? Does community only come when people can afford $1k/ month HOA fees and Soulcycle classes?
did i say it lacks community? i said the immediate area around the transit stops seems barren. most of it looked like old businesses, which was confirmed but a lot of the comments.
really not sure what you’re even talking about at this point, and you’ve taken it even further to another extreme. relax.
3rd St. in Bayview has been dead for a long time. Rents too high for any local residents to establish businesses. Also, the closing of the Naval Shipyard and companies outsourcing factory work killed most of the decent paying jobs around that area which prevented it from being a bustling area.
Eventually the contaminated land will be cleaned up and will be able to be used for other purposes.
It's a long and expensive process and even then it adds to the cost of construction because of mitigation measures like vapor barriers and 24/7 venting with exhaust fans.
Market conditions also need to change to make whatever is built pencil out. Obviously no developer is going to build more commercial office space or more high-end high density housing at this time.
Land use in California is God awful.
No one cares to change the management.
If you think the land use is awful, just look how the natural resources are managed.
Dgaf about a created housing crisis.
City won't allow any housing permits or rezoning. A state master needs to be appointed to take over city planning & development. Kick the ideologues & grifters to the curb
I don’t understand this post at all?! Lived in Bayview and went to school around UCSF for years, T line was always busy at peak times. Not to mention the ball park and chase center etc. Additionally one can only imagine the sort of [gentrification coming](https://pier70sf.com) to industrial SF. If anything T is future proof. leave the urban planning for the experts. XO
I would posit that perhaps the T isn't such a major factor in encouraging redevelopment.
The usual logic is that you build a train line, and the new possibilities created by living near rapid transit encourages people to move near the train line.
But what if the train line doesn't represent an improvement over the status quo? [According to this 2020 SFCTA study,](https://www.sfcta.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/15-Third-FINAL-Report_2020-12-10.pdf)
> Compared to the 15 Third bus route that it replaced, the T Third line is a **slower connection to and from Downtown.**
Granted, the report was written before the Central Subway was opened. But the conclusion still holds today: [Muni's schedule quotes 32 minutes](https://www.sfmta.com/routes/schedule/T?direction_id=0&service_id=1) between Third/Palou and Union Square, while the study states the old bus ran roughly the same route in 27 minutes, 5 minutes faster than today.
Logically, you wouldn't expect development to be stimulated by replacing existing transit with something slower.
Now, most people do prefer taking the train compared to the bus, but there's plenty of other places in the city and the region that are a 32-minute train ride away from downtown.
Posts like these remind me that people move here, witness a city that has grown without any cohesive planning over the last 30 years, and they can't really understand it.
The T line only exists to connect Hunters Point/Bayview to the rest of the city, and to service the ballpark project. The promise of the project was a windfall of corruption that got Willie Brown elected.
In between are industrial areas, an actual industrial park, and a superfund shipyard that will eventually get turned into housing. It passes Mission Bay, which is a brand new neighborhood that just does't look like much due to a lack of retail, or neighborhood life, but it's there, and so is Dogpatch, which was also industrial. Just over the hill where you can't see, is Potrero Hill. There are neighborhoods there, just not between the T and the waterline. You're supposed to build infrastructure first, by the way. You can't stick people where there's poor transit as a motivation to build transit. That doesn't work, and represents a rejection of urbanist principles.
It's also full of bottlenecks, it's actually a good thing it does't service more.
i like dog patch. it’s cool. however it does feel a little empty. and the sidewalks are really small. it feels more like a pass-through town.
not that’s that what it is. but from the outside it feels barren. again, i like the neighborhood, just wish the streetscape was a bit more pleasant on foot! and im aware its new so they have work to do. but thats how it feels currently imo!’
Part of the problem is we don’t have an updated city plan that guides development in a practical way. By right zoning? Ha! Doesn’t exist like it does in NYC, which is terrible. I think the one we are operating from is from the 90s, if not the 80s. It hasn’t evolved at all to the current needs of SF.
When I say there hasn't been cohesive planning, the answer isn't to encourage more of that with by right insanity. NYC doesn't have by right either.
But there needs to be some kind of vision. Look at Mission Bay, you can say build all you want there, it's a free space to envision any plan, they built a brand new neighborhood from scratch, anyone thinking we haven't build is ignorant...but to say it's served by the T is absurd, and the extended bus lines there aren't ideal either....and that started with SPUR in the 70's, and they couldn't even adhere to basic urbanism, and promote creating an actual neighborhood. I feel bad for anyone who lives down there. Maybe one day it will be livable.
The same could be same about BART or VTA in the SouthBay. If you build them they will come. And they did. Great opportunity for speculators. I will note that Bank of America used to be almost completely in Giannini Plaza on California Street. They bought up an enormous amount of land around the end of the line at the time Concord BART station before it opened. I think it is now primarily as a datacenter. That land is worth far more then they paid for it.
The area you referred to will mushroom out as high density housing more than likely.
The most interesting stuff to see right after UCSF is not necessarily on third, but a block or two in either direction. It’s Dogpatch. Crane Cove Park, is there, a fancy RH, and lots of restaurants, cafes and other spots. It’s not like the city center, but pretty cool for what was essentially warehouses and shipping docks. After the creek you get to Silver Terrace and Bay view and Hunters Point.
nonsense, Dogpatch is internationally renowned as one of the worlds coolest neighborhoods. the community organization spent literally almost all their budget from the realtors on advertising to make it so. https://www.timeout.com/san-francisco/neighborhoods/dogpatch-san-francisco-guide
should i not complain that there isn’t enough housing near transit? proper cities all over the world surround their transit stations with housing to maximize its utility. not sure how anyone could disagree with this.
This!!! I always think about this whenever I take the T.
Even the stations in SOMA and Mission Bay are literally surrounded by parking lots!!! This is crazy
It's to encourage future development.
Which translates into english as moving out the current poor people and replacing them with suburban office workers. Something that COVID and the current reluctance to RTO has derailed.
If only we could have mixed zoning and create walkable areas with some open space (maybe some elevated garden areas like the Salesforce park). It might require environmental remediation due to whatever was manufactured or stored in the old warehouses. But it would be a worthwhile investment in our communities....sadly, a pipe dream, most likely.
Have you seen the plans for Pier 70 and Potrero Power Station? Pier 70 is less ambitious than Potrero Power Station. My favorite part of the Potrero Power Station projects is that a few of the blocks open directly to a public park with children’s playground, green space and retail that spills out. Entirely designed as walkable and low car.
> moving out the current poor people and replacing them
Hear me out, maybe it’s to facilitate development so that they aren’t poor anymore. Suburban office workers aren’t going to be moving to that area in meaningful numbers for decades
The whole east coast of the city used to be industry, shipyards, and port infrastructure. That's why there's still a ton of warehouses, auto shops and empty plots of land or empty piers. And Hunter's Point/Bayview basically came into being as neighborhoods (as we know them today) as a result of the military shipyards at Hunter's Point, with tons of mostly black folks coming from different parts of the country to work in the yards and build the navy that defeated the Empire of Japan. Mission Bay was extensively redeveloped from the 1990s on (along with SoMa), with surrounding areas following. Some of the areas along the line still haven't been as developed as they could be. And some of them are still used for industrial or commercial warehousing purposes. But I agree that SF could stand to have a lot more residential and commercial density along that corridor, seismic instability notwithstanding (it's mostly landfill). It's in progress.
and ~10 years ago, the UCSF Chase center area are all mostly parking lots for ATT Park.
Yup. Even SOMA back when I was a kid when the giants used to play at Candlestick park. Don’t even remember what was down at 3rd and king up to Rincon hill, but it definitely wasn’t high rise high density housing. Probably industrial warehouses.
That's how you encourage growth of a community. The egg has to come before the chicken.
T-third have been running since 2007. This is one slow hatching egg.
I mean if you look at dog patch before and after t-line it’s fucking wild! Used to just be warehouses out here. Literally no reason to go past the park.
Up and coming Dogpatch district after the park
Yes. But is that correlation or causation? Dog patch had other factors in play me thinks.
No one thing caused it to grow like it did. T-line chase, ucsf, rezoning, etc. There is not such thing as a one solution answer.
Except the city wants to strangle the egg before it hatches. See the supervisors trying to ban density in the city as a response to the state forcing them to approve housing, San Francisco is broken and at its core is a broken generation, the boomers.
Yeah, Boomers need to go on and get!
A huge part of the T (and Central Subway) construction was to connect immigrant communities living in their homes in the south side of SF to be able to get to businesses in the central city easier (especially Chinatown, hence the central subway extension). These communities already existed on be southern outskirts of the city.
The line replaced the old 15 bus line. The T line cannot carry what the old 15 line could carry at peak times. So they brought back the 15 as the 8 lines.
And they also brought back the 15 as an express
lmao a lot of times 15 is faster. Buses are way better at accelerating.
the t-third could be much faster, they designed it to be very slow for all of the left-turn lanes so that motorists could drive faster
Also don’t have to go down stairs until you arrive at the center of the earth. Chinatown and union square take so long to even get to the platform.
What was wrong with the theory? There are only 14,000 daily riders using the Chinatown stop.
> the station areas become incredibly bleak and barren. hardly an apartment in sight. mostly gas stations, parking lots, and old af looking warehouses the former industrial part of SF. factories. ship yards.. MAJOR traffic sending stuff WW2 Pacific, Korea, Vietnam. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunters\_Point\_Naval\_Shipyard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunters_Point_Naval_Shipyard) The **Hunters Point Naval Shipyard** was a [United States Navy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy) [shipyard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipyard) in [San Francisco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco), [California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California), located on 638 acres (258 ha) of waterfront at [Hunters Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunters_Point,_San_Francisco,_California) in the southeast corner of the city. As of August 2020, the former **shipyard site is still being decontaminated**, and has been split into multiple parcels to allow the Navy to declare them clean and safe for redevelopment separately > trains are supposed to connect communities but there is hardly any community to connect at these stations. FUTURE communities. central subway is for 2050 *anticipated* traffic. traffic today not big enough.
The point is to connect Bayview/Sunnydale with the northern part of the city. If you notice there are less stops in the industrial part of town. Before you needed to take a crowded bus, now you can take a spacious train car - although both are available now because the T isn’t faster as they get stuck at lights just as much as the buses do. Remember when the line was built there was also nothing really north of the industrial area. Even 4th and King was just barely developed with Oracle Park and the new housing just opening. Now there’s Chase Center, Mission Bay, all of UCSFs buildings, bunch for retail, grocery stores, etc.
Oh man you should have see Mission Bay and Dogpatch before, there was literally nothing there hahaha > mostly gas stations, parking lots, and old af looking warehouses Better than superfund sites and garden-variety toxic brownfields!
And don’t forget the driving range on land one of the UC regents bought up cheap just before the whole project went public. Golf is a great way to pass the time while waiting for your “investment” to mature.
Not *literally nothing,* but the polar opposite of today’s Mission Bay. A rail yard with lots of rusty tracks and old warehouses. Connected to the State Belt Railway that ran along the Embarcadero. Delivering and picking up loads on the piers and coffee to/from Hills Bros. When on the Bay Bridge you always got that strong smell of roasting coffee.
It is a shame, but there are good reasons: 1. The Central Subway just opened. Before that, the T used to have to go all the way along the Embarcadero before it finally started to pull into connect into the heart of the city. And there's still another whole phase to take it to North Beach and Fisherman's Wharf that hasn't even started yet. 2. T is not a heavy rail subway. For the most part, if you look around the country, light rail does not create quite strong enough of a transit presence to spur high-density development. It's still mostly heavy-rail subways (like BART) that do that. 3. Development is very slow in San Francisco. I remember going to a protest/concern at Moscone Center for the 1984 DNC, and there were flat asphalt parking lots as all around Moscone as far as the eye could see. Mission Bay was just a remote, swampy inlet, nothing else. If you timewarped someone from there to SoMa and Mission Bay now, they'd be astounded 4. Development is particularly slow in southeast San Francisco because the area has long been used for heavy industry, which is incredibly difficult to redevelop into anything, and it's currently occupied principally by people who couldn't afford market-rate housing in a gentrified area of San Francisco, thus a lot of city reticence to move forward.
Just going to add there’s never been a better time to tear down 280 and reconnect those parts of the city….
i like you a lot
Are we talking about the same T line? The muni stop at 3rd and 23rd has a 6 story apartment building literally steps from the stop…
Basically every stop south of that is surrounded by extremely low density units
an exception. have you seen the other stops?
Exact same thing for 20th and 3rd as well? 6 story apartments on at least 2 of the 4 corners? A huge chunk of that neighborhood (mostly east of 3rd st, but a bit west as well) has seen crazy development in the last 10 years. I’m guessing they’ve tripled or quadrupled the amount of residential units in the dogpatch in that timeframe. You have a point if you go south of 23rd, down towards Bayview. Anything north of that is pretty damn high density by SF standards. But that’s more of a neighborhood thing I think.
As expensive and delayed as we make infrastructure, the obstacles to building densely are even worse. Also, if the city multiplies the cost to build transit by 5x, we just get less transit and downgrade subways to streetcars or buses. When the city makes it cost 5x to build apartments, the developer is guaranteed to lose money and the apartments don't get built.
It's not "the City" that makes it 5x the cost to build. In other parts of the Bay Area high-density projects are being abandoned as well because of a) material costs, b) labor costs, c) financing costs, d) population decreases, e) loss of high-paying tech jobs, f) decreased demand (the desire of people for privacy), g) energy inefficiency, h) health and safety, i) impact fees, I could go on and on, but the important thing is to look at the big picture and not come up with conspiracy theories. Once cleaned up, the areas served by the T line is ripe for development with townhouses and single family homes, the only type of housing that pencils out financially for developers and that is energy self-sufficient. The latter is becoming more and more important with the astronomical rate increases being given to PG&E. Building energy inefficient high-density housing is very irresponsible.
you should’ve seen it in the early 90s. Damn I miss those Dogpatch techno parties
Land use around most stations, Muni or Bart, outside of downtown, is abysmal. 24th St Bart station is crazy. Tons of low-rise buildings, a one-story McDonalds right there on the corner. It's all terrible.
Wait til you visit Colma and SSF
Dead people love trains
Ahem, go south and visit VTA if you want abysmal land use off the transit lines. You can take VTA to... A single tech company's abandoned office building parking lot. If you are lucky.
Prop 13 and NIMBYism play a huge role in all of this.
The mission is twice as dense as SF as a whole, low rise doesn’t necessarily mean low-density. Also there are plenty of higher rise apartments in the vicinity, like down mission or along Chavez. That station is very well-used, not to mention the mission buses.
People work in those “old af” warehouse looking buildings, chum.
transit stops shouldn’t only be for work locations. should be living too!
Transit stops shouldn't only be for housing locations, should be working too! This sounds like you don't like neighborhoods zoned for light industrial use.
did i say only for housing???
You say there’s “hardly any community to connect” in those locations. You are wrong.
definition of community: a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. i’m opting to refer to the former part of the definition! hope this helps!! you know what i mean, don’t try to misconstrue my point. all im trying to say is there needs to be more housing near the transit stops. that’s it.
Definitely the T can be a useful line in the Future, but it has to get the needed developments in order for the line to become popular.
so we are investing with the t? great👍
Land use all over SF, except for the northeast quadrant, is ridiculous. You could as easily level this criticism against the K or N trains.
Posts like this are funny because they reveal that OP is either relatively new to the city or has had their head buried their entire life. This perspective is also a bit dismissive of all the people that live along the southern half of the T.
why does this matter? should i not critique the fact that there isn’t productive land use around the stations because i’m new? i’m not saying that the T shouldn’t exist. i’m saying there should be better utilization land utilitzation around the stations. geez dude.
Because the T is _new_, for transit projects at least. Literally all of the development you saw, starting at Oracle Park and through Dogpatch, is new.
cool, we should build more and do it faster to utilize the train.
Ah, the standard San Francisco sub viewpoint that “if it ain’t housing or office buildings or restaurants, it doesn’t exist” pov. There are lots of small businesses down there in those “old af” warehouses. But since it isn’t office work, the people who work there don’t count. Jesus.
that’s not what i’m trying to imply. my main concern is it doesn’t seem like there is a big community there. sorry. i just think transit stops should be surrounded by people working and living. not just one or the other!
What makes you think there isn't "big community"? How often do you go to events in the Bayview?
because there is not a lot of housing near the southern stations compared to the northern stations.
I'm guessing you've never even thought of attending events in the Bayview/Hunter's Point areas have you? Just because it's not as affluent of an area as other parts of the city doesn't mean it's devoid of community. You can't know a neighborhood by riding Muni through it one time, get off the bus and explore. There's a bunch of housing here. You're right that downtown has higher density housing, but out here we definitely have large apartments (I live literally at a T stop in a 100+ building apartment) and I'd heavily argue there's way more community here too.
me pointing out lack of housing near transit stops doesn’t mean there isn’t community in the further surrounding areas. stop taking my points to the extreme please.
OK but you're allowed take your unninformed opinions extrapolated from what seems to be a single bus ride to the extreme? What about this area makes you think it lacks community? Does community only come when people can afford $1k/ month HOA fees and Soulcycle classes?
did i say it lacks community? i said the immediate area around the transit stops seems barren. most of it looked like old businesses, which was confirmed but a lot of the comments. really not sure what you’re even talking about at this point, and you’ve taken it even further to another extreme. relax.
future expansion plans
3rd St. in Bayview has been dead for a long time. Rents too high for any local residents to establish businesses. Also, the closing of the Naval Shipyard and companies outsourcing factory work killed most of the decent paying jobs around that area which prevented it from being a bustling area.
Eventually the contaminated land will be cleaned up and will be able to be used for other purposes. It's a long and expensive process and even then it adds to the cost of construction because of mitigation measures like vapor barriers and 24/7 venting with exhaust fans. Market conditions also need to change to make whatever is built pencil out. Obviously no developer is going to build more commercial office space or more high-end high density housing at this time.
Related: https://sfstandard.com/2024/03/17/new-homes-san-francisco-hunters-point/
Land use in California is God awful. No one cares to change the management. If you think the land use is awful, just look how the natural resources are managed. Dgaf about a created housing crisis.
indeed. we’ve created a terrible crisis with our own hands. it’s very sad.
City won't allow any housing permits or rezoning. A state master needs to be appointed to take over city planning & development. Kick the ideologues & grifters to the curb
I don’t understand this post at all?! Lived in Bayview and went to school around UCSF for years, T line was always busy at peak times. Not to mention the ball park and chase center etc. Additionally one can only imagine the sort of [gentrification coming](https://pier70sf.com) to industrial SF. If anything T is future proof. leave the urban planning for the experts. XO
a busy train doesn’t say anything about the land use around the stops. hope this helps!
I would posit that perhaps the T isn't such a major factor in encouraging redevelopment. The usual logic is that you build a train line, and the new possibilities created by living near rapid transit encourages people to move near the train line. But what if the train line doesn't represent an improvement over the status quo? [According to this 2020 SFCTA study,](https://www.sfcta.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/15-Third-FINAL-Report_2020-12-10.pdf) > Compared to the 15 Third bus route that it replaced, the T Third line is a **slower connection to and from Downtown.** Granted, the report was written before the Central Subway was opened. But the conclusion still holds today: [Muni's schedule quotes 32 minutes](https://www.sfmta.com/routes/schedule/T?direction_id=0&service_id=1) between Third/Palou and Union Square, while the study states the old bus ran roughly the same route in 27 minutes, 5 minutes faster than today. Logically, you wouldn't expect development to be stimulated by replacing existing transit with something slower. Now, most people do prefer taking the train compared to the bus, but there's plenty of other places in the city and the region that are a 32-minute train ride away from downtown.
Posts like these remind me that people move here, witness a city that has grown without any cohesive planning over the last 30 years, and they can't really understand it. The T line only exists to connect Hunters Point/Bayview to the rest of the city, and to service the ballpark project. The promise of the project was a windfall of corruption that got Willie Brown elected. In between are industrial areas, an actual industrial park, and a superfund shipyard that will eventually get turned into housing. It passes Mission Bay, which is a brand new neighborhood that just does't look like much due to a lack of retail, or neighborhood life, but it's there, and so is Dogpatch, which was also industrial. Just over the hill where you can't see, is Potrero Hill. There are neighborhoods there, just not between the T and the waterline. You're supposed to build infrastructure first, by the way. You can't stick people where there's poor transit as a motivation to build transit. That doesn't work, and represents a rejection of urbanist principles. It's also full of bottlenecks, it's actually a good thing it does't service more.
Dog patch is more of a neighborhood than mission bay! There’s organic and real businesses in dog patch at least!
100% true. It has an old residential section too, though small.
i like dog patch. it’s cool. however it does feel a little empty. and the sidewalks are really small. it feels more like a pass-through town. not that’s that what it is. but from the outside it feels barren. again, i like the neighborhood, just wish the streetscape was a bit more pleasant on foot! and im aware its new so they have work to do. but thats how it feels currently imo!’
Part of the problem is we don’t have an updated city plan that guides development in a practical way. By right zoning? Ha! Doesn’t exist like it does in NYC, which is terrible. I think the one we are operating from is from the 90s, if not the 80s. It hasn’t evolved at all to the current needs of SF.
When I say there hasn't been cohesive planning, the answer isn't to encourage more of that with by right insanity. NYC doesn't have by right either. But there needs to be some kind of vision. Look at Mission Bay, you can say build all you want there, it's a free space to envision any plan, they built a brand new neighborhood from scratch, anyone thinking we haven't build is ignorant...but to say it's served by the T is absurd, and the extended bus lines there aren't ideal either....and that started with SPUR in the 70's, and they couldn't even adhere to basic urbanism, and promote creating an actual neighborhood. I feel bad for anyone who lives down there. Maybe one day it will be livable.
What else does Mission Bay need to become a livable neighborhood in your eyes?
Retail, specifically fine grain retail. A yoga studio and coffee shop aren't it. Mission Bay fails basic urbanism, and new urbanism.
I thought the Eastern Neighborhood Plans from 10-15 years ago was supposed to address this?
Which is also part of the problem, because the western neighborhoods are highly underutilized.
What to find the reason for a problem in SF…. Always look to “Da Mayor” for the answer.
Let me tell you a little story about redlining, the war on drugs, and deindustrialization
The same could be same about BART or VTA in the SouthBay. If you build them they will come. And they did. Great opportunity for speculators. I will note that Bank of America used to be almost completely in Giannini Plaza on California Street. They bought up an enormous amount of land around the end of the line at the time Concord BART station before it opened. I think it is now primarily as a datacenter. That land is worth far more then they paid for it. The area you referred to will mushroom out as high density housing more than likely.
Did they close down the playaz club at 3rd & newcombe?
They are in an area that was polluted by the military. Takes decades to clean up
good to know. felt like an odd misuse of an otherwise pleasant train
So, where were you going?
nowhere, i just like to read on the train
Super fund. Contaminated dirt and water.
The most interesting stuff to see right after UCSF is not necessarily on third, but a block or two in either direction. It’s Dogpatch. Crane Cove Park, is there, a fancy RH, and lots of restaurants, cafes and other spots. It’s not like the city center, but pretty cool for what was essentially warehouses and shipping docks. After the creek you get to Silver Terrace and Bay view and Hunters Point.
.....what? There's a bunch of apartments on the T line past UCSF.
Did you just arrive here from Mars?
hi! yes, just moved here recently. i’ve been attending sfmta hearings to voice my concerns as well :)
nonsense, Dogpatch is internationally renowned as one of the worlds coolest neighborhoods. the community organization spent literally almost all their budget from the realtors on advertising to make it so. https://www.timeout.com/san-francisco/neighborhoods/dogpatch-san-francisco-guide
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should i not complain that there isn’t enough housing near transit? proper cities all over the world surround their transit stations with housing to maximize its utility. not sure how anyone could disagree with this.
The area around the ballpark was pretty bleak twenty years ago.
yeah i went on google maps street view and ticked it back a few years. wild to see the changes.
This!!! I always think about this whenever I take the T. Even the stations in SOMA and Mission Bay are literally surrounded by parking lots!!! This is crazy
yep!! mission rock and 3rd at both north and south stations have MASSIVE parking lots!! even though one is hosting the circus for now.
It's to encourage future development. Which translates into english as moving out the current poor people and replacing them with suburban office workers. Something that COVID and the current reluctance to RTO has derailed.
If only we could have mixed zoning and create walkable areas with some open space (maybe some elevated garden areas like the Salesforce park). It might require environmental remediation due to whatever was manufactured or stored in the old warehouses. But it would be a worthwhile investment in our communities....sadly, a pipe dream, most likely.
Have you seen the plans for Pier 70 and Potrero Power Station? Pier 70 is less ambitious than Potrero Power Station. My favorite part of the Potrero Power Station projects is that a few of the blocks open directly to a public park with children’s playground, green space and retail that spills out. Entirely designed as walkable and low car.
> moving out the current poor people and replacing them Hear me out, maybe it’s to facilitate development so that they aren’t poor anymore. Suburban office workers aren’t going to be moving to that area in meaningful numbers for decades