Golden Gate Park is wrong place for four-lane highway

In the 1960s San Francisco's Recreation and Parks Commission voted to build an elevated freeway through the Golden Gate Park Panhandle. Public outcry stopped the proposal dead in its tracks.

Today the commission is again planning to bring high-speed cars into the park, this time by widening Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to four lanes, from the corner of Ninth Avenue and Lincoln past the County Fair Building, past Middle Drive, and into the Music Concourse. The purpose is to feed traffic to and from the new garage in the park.

The Municipal Transit Agency has given the plan a thumbs-down. The MTA said that the new parkway will increase vehicle speeds, will delay Muni buses both inside and outside the park, and will make the park less safe for pedestrians and bicyclists. The four-lane roadway plan was rushed through without proper environmental review and without any studies on pedestrian or bicycle safety.

Opposition is widespread and growing. The Inner Sunset Merchants Association, representing 300 area businesses, says that the increase in traffic is bad for business. Senior- and pedestrian-advocacy groups, such as Senior Action Network, Walk SF, and the Pedestrian Safety Advisory Committee, point to studies showing that faster-moving cars adjacent to curbside sidewalks cause pedestrian injuries. Transit groups, including the MTA Citizens Advisory Committee and Rescue Muni, fear that the new four-lane roadway will bring an already clogged Ninth Avenue to a grinding halt, delaying tens of thousands of streetcar and bus riders.

District 5 Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi has come out against the plan, along with a wide range of former District 5 candidates including Andrew Sullivan (who was endorsed by Mayor Newsom), Lisa Feldstein, Dan Kalb, Susan King, and Julian Davis. Political opposition includes the Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Democratic Club, the Richmond Democratic Club, and the San Francisco Green Party. Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, and San Francisco Tomorrow are unanimously opposed.

Today's freeway proposal in Golden Gate Park is not as drastic as the one proposed in the '60s, but it's still a bad idea.

What You Can Do

Stop the parkway in the park! Contact Mayor Gavin Newsom at (415) 554-6141; fax: (415) 554-6160 or email gavin.newsom@sfgov.org; or write:

City Hall, Room 200
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
San Francisco, CA 94102

Tell him not to let the Recreation and Parks Commission wreck the park with a four-lane highway.