Warriors Coming to SF - Expect Muni Nightmares

There's now word from the city the Golden State Warriors will have their new home at Piers 30/32 here in San Francisco and be open in 2017.  While sad for Oakland, it's great news for our city to get sales tax money and have a large indoor sports arena for our city.

Surely this is exciting news, but being a local resident of the city, I have fears of a big nightmare.

As we all know, AT&T Park is not far away from the new arena site and if you have ever gone to a Giants home game, you know how bad traffic and transit can be.  Traffic before and after games is slow or just a standstill.  If you ride Muni metro to the ballpark, you know about the passenger crush loads on every single train.  For Caltrain and BART, they are also busy shipping baseball fans to and from the game.

But with the Warriors in town, the worst nightmare will be when both the Giants and Warriors plays on the same day at the same time.  I don't think Muni metro will be able to take on the huge loads of passengers going to both games.

Muni was smart when they built the platforms along the Embarcadero, they are so long, you can fit at least three train cars.  But Muni metro has a few big problems:

1. They can't operate three car trains anywhere on the surface or subway (something about running in "tow mode").  The more trains, the better the capacity.
2. The passenger loads are already at crush loads for Giants games.
3. The passengers living along the T-Third line will continue to experience hell because it's both one-car trains and for many, can't get on the train to get home.
4. There's always a backup of Muni metro trains after an event because they line-up trains on the revenue track.  Passengers from Caltrain and the T-Third gets stuck waiting for trains ahead to clear-out.
5. There's usually a back-up of inbound metro trains at Embarcadero before Giants games.  Why?  Muni officials holds the ballpark bound trains longer at the platform and fill them to capacity while other non-ballpark bound trains are waiting in line.

I think Muni can at least start the planning stages on how to handle the Warriors crowds.  Let's remember there's not much parking around the area and more will be depending on public transportation to get people to and from the games.

Here's a few of my ideas for Muni:

1. Realign the metro tracks along the surface route nearest to have three tracks.  The outer tracks are revenue tracks and the middle track can be a staging area for extra trains so they don't block regular service provided by the N-Judah and T-Third lines.
2. Provide express bus service from Embarcadero station to Warriors arena.
3. Find a way for Giants fans to utilize the future Central Subway while Warriors fans uses the Howard street Muni platform.

Just a few other random transit ideas (more of a dream):

1. Definitely more ferries with bigger capacity.  Extra boarding/disembarking doors on the boats will help.
2. Utilize AT&T Park's parking lot for vehicle parking with a nearby ferry dock to provide frequent high speed ferry service to and from the Warriors arena.
3. Disneyland style multi car trams to major transit stations (is that even street legal?).
4. Bore another subway tunnel to serve the arena and ballpark.
5. Offer incentives for people to take transit, such as buy a game ticket and get half-price fares on public transit.
6. How about a monorail?  "Monorail, monorail, monorail!  Mono... D'oh!"

Naming the New 49ers Stadium - My Nomination Won!

If you read that blog entry title, you might have noticed I won the naming of the future 49ers Stadium in Santa Clara. Well... that's half-true. In fact, it was a hypothetical name that I suggested.

Last Wednesday, SFGate's 'City Insider' asked their commentators for their ideas to name the future 49ers Stadium in Santa Clara. Many suggested names that identifies how they feel about the team, such as making fun of the Yorks, to mentioning about the tech sector.

I said to myself, hell, why not take a punch at some fun names. I suggested:

1. Candlestick II (the roman numeral signifies two middle fingers)
2. SuperMegaTaxpayerDollarWaste Stadium

It turned out, suggestion number two got on the ballot and it was active over the weekend for everyone to vote.

Here was the choices SFGate posted for voting:

1. SuperMegaTaxpayerDollarWaste Stadium
2. York's Sports Suckplex
3. Fool's Gold Field
4. iPark
5. San Francisco 49ers of Anaheim Stadium
6. Field of Schemes
   
7. Field of Dashed Hopes and Broken Dreams
8. York's Dorks
9. "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" Stadium
10. Mike "I Want Winners" Singletary Memorial Field

The results (posted here) says, my nomination actually won! I had the most first place votes (250) and the most overall votes (562).

Yeah yeah... like the Niners are really going to pick my name. Maybe York is laughing his ass off right now saying... "It's all private funds! (Cough!)"

(Regarding the photo: Can Crazy Crab be a co-mascot for the 49ers?)

49ers Stadium in Santa Clara with Taxpayer Money - Are you nuts?

I keep hearing in the news about the 49ers wanting to build a football stadium in Santa Clara, nearby their main headquarters office and next to the Great America theme park.

I'll admit, Candlestick Park is really getting old and way outdated and a new facility is needed, but is Santa Clara going after the deal of a lifetime or ready to get screwed?

Santa Clara is proposing to pay a portion of the stadium costs with taxpayer money, which makes me wonder, why does the 49ers organization want to pay for a stadium with the public's money?  Can't that money help pay for other improvement projects like fixing potholes, fixing schools and other local government buildings, or maybe opening a community clinic?

It also makes me wonder why the 49ers can't simply buy up the land and build it themselves with their OWN MONEY.  With the economy all beat-up, all levels of government facing layoffs, cuts, furlough, and closures; it doesn't make practical sense for a city to invest millions of dollars of tax money into building a stadium that won't be used on a daily basis.

Now what I mean by "daily basis" is this: a sports stadium is not used every day, in fact, a football stadium is used only about a dozen times a year.  If you include another sports team, that still doesn't make up for making it a fully useful facility.  I would support using tax money to build a hospital or a City Hall because the property will be used every single day for business.  Tax money on a facility not used on a near daily basis = waste of money.  Tax money on a site used daily = a worthwhile investment.

What's wrong 49ers?  Why can't you fund it yourself?

Look at AT&T Park, they built their facility without public money and did additional fundraising by simply selling "charter" seats (seat licensing).  The Cal Bears are raising money by selling 50 year ticket plans for up to $250K a seat with additional perks.  Even corporate headquarters are not paid with tax money, they have the money to build and maintain their facilities.

For you taxpayers in Santa Clara, think about what kind of debt the city and how much more in taxes you will pay for the stadium.  Give the 49ers the finger and vote against it.