Many enviro urban pioneers who moved here from the suburbs don’t like that idea, hell, they’re afraid of any significant capital projects to speak of. We should all take our BRT and like it so they can get on with enjoying the rich and vibrant “experience economy” (TM) that San Francisco offers.

but then again, most of them do not live in close proximity to the freeway either, being forced to breathe the diesel particulate in our homes, or navigate on and off ramps by bicycle or foot to get most anywhere.

Undergrounding US-101 would also allow for air filtration to capture particulate matter for disposal.

And taking through traffic off of surface streets would clear the way for a much more efficient Muni.

Were the City to incorporate TBM capacity, in addition to boring subway tunnels, we could bore freeways.

If the freeway were taken down around San Bruno and Division, in the middle of the wye, then traffic could articulate 180 degrees, from Townsend to the east, 7th, 9th and 11th north, and division to the west.

Josh, to be nitpicky for no reason at all in response to not knowing where Duboce, 13th and Division–the same street–begin and end, there are not hundreds of streets that connect the freeway to the Golden Gate Gridge.

-marc

Where is Vision St? I’m not aware of any street with that name. If you are referring to Division, you should not worry about having to cross both it and Duboce on Valencia, since Division St does not cross Valencia – it stops at Bryant.

To say that the Central Freeway is the only link to the Western half of the city from the Bridge is silly. There are hundreds of streets that go there. Drivers should take those streets since they have the capacity to allow far more cars to flow smoothly across town than a 1-mile elevated freeway does.

I would never argue that Marin/Peninsula trips should all go around SF. But those of us unfortunate enough to live in their way have no obligation to blight our city for their near-exclusive benefit. I welcome suburbanites to visit and even drive through our city… just don’t make us pay for it.

Josh: Whether you like it or not, Marin to/from Peninsula drivers HAVE to go through SF. Telling people to go around is ridiculous. Last time I looked, the Central Freeway provides a vital link through SF and the ONLY link to the ENTIRE WESTERN HALF of the City from the Bay Bridge/Bayshore area.

You talk about spreading the traffic load onto 30 streets. I’d like to know what the reaction of the residents on those 30 streets would be. I’ll tell you right now – not happy.

KRoberts: You make it sound like a small group of people opposed the freeway removal which is not true. Many people in the north and west (Richmond and Sunset) opposed the freeway removal. That’s almost half of the city! That 5 minutes of delay adds up quickly.

What really needs to be done is to improve the environment under the freeway. The neighborhood should concentrate their efforts on that instead.

The intersection of Potrero, 10th and Brannan is insane as is… I don’t think adding a freeway on/off ramp would improve the mix.

I say phase the freeway out in the blocks owned by Caltrans btw San Bruno and Vermont right after it leaves the ground off Potrero Hill. (http://tinyurl.com/bsxvex)

Close the Vermont/Mariposa off-ramp, which dumps freeway-speed traffic onto a residential block. Then have the lanes peel away at 16th and at Division to allow the cars getting off to go East-West along those streets, North along San Bruno/9th/Larkin and South of Market at Brannan or Townsend.

Then tear down the whole freeway along Bryant all the way to the bridge approaches.

Rarely is it this beautiful:

http://flickr.com/photos/28798706@N05/3095444673/

Demolish the remnants of the central freeway with SVN and Mission/Duboce/Van Ness ramps, touch down the WB I-80 connector to US-101 at 9th and have entrance ramps for US-101 and I-80 in the public ROW where the wye is now.

WIth a touchdown around 9th, traffic travelling north can articulate easily for about 180 degrees, to points west via Duboce or the boulevard into HV, points north via 9th, and points east on Brannan or Townsend.

-marc

I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. The planning process for the Central Freeway spanned many years and three separate ballot initiatives. Nothing would have made the anti-freeway faction happier than a South of Market touchdown (hell, they could tear the whole damn thing down & you wouldn’t hear a peep out of me). As I understood it, the main opposition to a touchdown further south of Market came not from the Hayes Valley activists who spearheaded the fight against the freeway, but a) from the automotive & motorcycle shops along South Van Ness, who didn’t want freeway traffic spewing out in front of their stores (and yes, the irony of that should NOT be lost on you), and b) residents of the Outer Richmond, who just hated the thought that their commutes downtown through the park might take a couple minutes longer, and who came very close to winning their fight to reinforce and widen the freeway overpass, rather than destroy it. Then the South of Market residents, once they realized how the new onramp was going to affect them, started trying to organize legal action to stop it (I know, because I found an attorney for them), but by then it was too late.

Most of all, though, I feel that the best thing we can do at this point is look forward, instead of looking back and finger-pointing (not that I’m always against finger-pointing, but I feel in this instance it is particularly counter-productive). If we do finally have a chance to correct this grievous mistake, that’s great news, and let’s try to stay on top of it & take advantage of it as much as we can.

–Katherine

EN-TRIPS is a complicated ambitious study which has incubated anaerobically, cancerlike, over the past 5 or so years into something that will take five more years to finish at the earliest, another case of a mega omnibus plan that requires a mega contract for an long and expensive EIR to clear. They’re still studying how to study it after they were supposed to begin the study in 2003. Sounds just like the Bike Plan.

Note that the critical land use planning in the EN was done in advance of any rational transportation planning, the height bumps were there irrespective of the capacity of the system to adsorb that many more new trips, cheers, Gus.

Too often bureaucrats feel a sense of self edification based on how large the contracts are that they let for consulting services. EN-TRIPS is a whopper already, and this would balloon that out further. The last thing we need is for mission creep in a mega study to crowd our repairing this scar. We know how these things work around here.

The matter of the Freeway south of Market predates my involvement in local politics, but let’s just say that most everything good about the Octavia Boulevard project and the associated Market Octavia plan accrued to north of Market, to a relatively recently gentrified and bleached Hayes Valley, while most everything undesirable was foisted on the south of Market areas, especially the North Mission which has median incomes of 1/2 of that of HV and is minority caucasian.

Nobody really cared about the N. Mission and SOMA at the time, just as now a neighborhood of “people who do not count” where decision makers feel free to play Sim City to pay their political debts.

Given Planning’s recent demonstrated lack of attention to detail in EN, and their generali hostility to the impacted communities and the TA’s more professional culture, I’d imagine that if the community were able to weigh the choices, they’d want the TA to do this. But, of course, the community AMIs average out to $30K/yr, many do not speak English, few have completed high school, fewer college, and this is complex stuff.

-marc

Moving these cars from one cross-town arterial onto the city’s grid will make traffic flow more smoothly and increase the safety of the streets in one move:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=removing-roads-and-traffic-lights

The problem with 19th Ave is that everybody tries to take it, rather than spreading out across the 30 or so other fully cross-town avenues. To accommodate those people, transportation planners made the wrong decision to widen it and increase vehicle speeds. That’s why the street is dangerous and gridlocked.

The Central Freeway isn’t even a cross-town link, it ends at Market Street. At that point cars are “dumped” onto city streets. The elevated structure above Division does nothing to stop that.