

Cleve Shaffer's 1937 SF subway plan - juanplusjuan
http://blog.sfgate.com/thebigevent/2015/07/10/35-years-before-bart-a-subway-and-moving-sidewalk-on-market-st/

======
jacobolus
On the subject of old San Francisco transportation plans, check out this map
of the desired freeways in the late 40s/early 50s:

[http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~25...](http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~258970~5522255)

[http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~25...](http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~258982~5522256)

The plan was to wipe out a bunch of downtown neighborhoods and blanket the
city in freeways so it would be more accessible from the suburbs, just as
happened to many other American cities in the 50s–70s. Luckily, San
Franciscans protested loudly and most of it didn’t happen.

Another fascinating one is Burnham’s San Francisco plan from 1905. He wanted
to add plazas, green spaces, etc. reminiscent of European cities, to end up
with something like this:

[http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~28...](http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~28527~1120417)

Then the earthquake and fire happened and the plan was scuttled. (Was probably
unrealistically destructive and expensive in the first place, but kind of
interesting to look at.)

~~~
duskwuff
Civic Center and most of downtown Market to be replaced by a "Central Parking
District"?!

Oh my god, that's even worse than I thought. Bonus points for proposing a
"Southern Crossing" bridge be built to Alameda (I guess)... I'm not sure what
the point of that would have been, let alone how they'd make it happen from a
technical standpoint. (The Bay Bridge was buildable because it made a landing
on Treasure Island; there's no such stopping point for this bridge.)

------
paulsutter
Fascinating. Robert Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll"[1] was written in 1940,
after this article. Heinlein's roads had sections that went up to 100MPH but
otherwise look to be taken from the idea in this 1937 article.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll)

