Congratulations to Pam, Drew, Carolyn, Debbie and all our other friends at TriMet for winning the gold medal in the print category at the recent American Public Transportation Association’s award show . The award honors a multi-purpose piece we created to drum up corporate and public support as well as ridership for the new WES commuter rail that runs between Beaverton and Wilsonville. It’s an honor to work with all of you.

Do you like watching bloody transit carnage unfold? You’re in luck, here’s a doozy.

Check out these fantastic series of posts on the proposed Central Subway in San Francisco.

(Primer for the uninitiated: a proposal is on deck to extend the T-Third MUNI Metro line from the Cal Train station at 4th and King underground via 4th and Stockton Streets to Chinatown, ending somewhere around Clay Street. This is a map of the route.)

This is my favorite post of the series. Eric takes exceptional detail in explaining why the Central Subway wouldn’t work as proposed, especially under MUNI’s watch.

I agree wholeheartedly: the Central Subway is an unmitigated disaster in process. MUNI’s antiquated metro system is a relic of the ancient past, recently brought to its knees when the T-Third line began service despite nearly a billion dollars of capital investment into the system during that project. The last thing the City needs is to spend a billion dollars more on this piece of crap excuse for a light rail system.

Let’s stop writing these ridiculous capital checks to a city agency that can’t handle its current responsibilities. Sure, let’s give a loaded gun to a trigger happy convicted murderer in a crowded stadium! They’re gonna strike again, folks.

How about spending this gigantic chunk of change on immediately implementing smart transit options for the City? (Read: Geary + Van Ness BRT to start with.) Is this too much to ask? What do we pay (rather well) all these city planners for anyway? Why can transit novices like me realize the stupidity of these projects while our Supervisors think a Central Subway is the best thing we can do for the City? Hogwash.