Troubled SF Central Subway has a new problem: The boss quit

San Francisco’s $1.6 billion Central Subway project, already a year behind schedule, is facing a new challenge.

John Funghi, the Municipal Transportation Agency engineer who has overseen the big dig for 11 years, has been recruited to honcho Caltrain’s

$1.9 billion conversion of its rail service from diesel to electric trains. He starts in February.

As for Funghi’s replacement?

“We will be posting the job,” said transportation agency spokesman Paul Rose, though he could not offer a timeline for it to be filled.

“It’s a bittersweet decision to leave,” said Funghi, who told us he will help out with the transition. “But it was just too good an opportunity to pass up ... building the spine to get commuter rail into downtown San Francisco.”

The Central Subway, a 1.7-mile extension of the T-Third Street line running from Fourth and Townsend streets to Chinatown, is about two-thirds finished. The scheduled opening date, however, is up for debate.

The subway’s main contractor, Tutor Perini Corp., recently told the Board of Supervisors that the line won’t be ready for passenger service until spring 2021 — nearly 2½ years after the original target date.

The city maintains the line will be completed by December 2019.

Tutor Perini has also submitted change order claims for the Central Subway that total $112 million. That exceeds the city’s contingency fund for the project by $33 million.

The money demands and prospect of further delays have made for an increasingly uneasy relationship between the transportation agency and its contractor. And that’s causing ripples of concern at City Hall.

MTA officials say Funghi’s replacement will work for the agency. However, we hear there’s a push to turn over management of the project to the Public Works Department — the same crew that was assigned to step in to finish the overdue and over-budget Transbay Transit Center after the ouster of its director, Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan.

“As far as I’m concerned, every option is on the table because this project is too important,” said MTA board member Art Torres.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin chimed in, “The project is already behind schedule and close to being over budget, so whoever they get had better be the best in the business.”

Lee without politics: Sunday was the day for San Francisco’s political family to celebrate Ed Lee’s life under the soaring dome of City Hall. But Saturday was when his closest friends and colleagues gathered in private to remember the late mayor.

There were no elected officials among the 150 people who attended Saturday’s service at Duggan’s funeral home in Daly City. “Not a single one,” one friend told us.

The service, lasting about two hours, was heavy on a retelling of Lee’s favorite jokes.

Among those who were there were former co-workers including City Administrator Naomi Kelly and Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, one of Lee’s closest friends.

We’re told the event was emceed by another close friend and golfing buddy, David Ishida, the partner of city Recreation and Park Commission member Gloria Bonilla.

Ballpark hangover: The A’s bid to build a ballpark near Oakland’s Laney College put trustees of the Peralta Community College District in a tough spot.

“No matter what we did, we were going to have half the city hating us,” said Peralta board member Nicky González Yuen.

He said he received an email from one ballpark booster pledging never to support the district again after the trustees shot down the prospect of selling land to the A’s. Such a deal, the email sender wrote, “could mean the salvation of the district in desperate times.”

The timing wasn’t good, either. The A’s offer came just two weeks after the district introduced a facilities master plan showing the four-campus system needs $1.7 billion in repairs and upgrades — including $90 million to replace the district headquarters and maintenance yard where the A’s had hoped to build their ballpark.

With barely any financial reserves, the district is considering asking Alameda County voters within the next couple of years to approve a huge bond, perhaps upward of $400 million, to pay for the improvements.

Such a bond would need 55 percent approval — a tough task, and even tougher when you’ve annoyed baseball fans up and down the East Bay.

González Yuen said letting the A’s build a ballpark wouldn’t have brought in nearly the amount of money the district needs, and that a stadium would have worsened the quality of life at Laney. But others think Peralta is missing the larger picture.

Among them are Chinatown Chamber of Commerce President Carl Chan and other business interests, who are pressing Mayor Libby Schaaf to try to revive the Peralta talks.

“We believe the recent action by the Peralta board to end discussions with the Oakland A’s, while certainly within their own purview, was done prematurely and without input from a larger set of community stakeholders,” Chan said. “We have to find a way to keep the A’s in Oakland.”

Schaaf told us, “I will be convening different interested parties who want to show a more collective force to help the A’s problem-solve and get something done in Oakland.”

But as far as revisiting the Laney site, she said, “If Peralta has a change of opinion, then it is definitely worth going back to — but that is not something I have heard.”