Comments on: Mayor Newsom, Caltrans Announce Plans to Remove Portions of I-280

By: Spencer Gusick

Spencer Gusick — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:18:29 +0000

I get that this is a joke, but this would wreak havoc on the Peninsula. For one thing, if you are headed to SF for the day, 280 is the only realistic route for hundreds of thousands of people. 101 is always gridlocked from at least Cesar Chavez north. 280 provides fast access to Glen Park, Noe Valley, the Mission, Potrero Hill, SoMa and even the Marina. The alternative would put way more cars on the already miserable Franklin/Van Ness corridor, and it would take an hour or more to get across town. I would just stop coming. (Yes, now you can laugh about the benefits of keeping the B&T crowd out, but we spend money in restaurants and theaters same as everyone else, and see if that is really good for SF. BTW, I lived in the city for years before family-unfriendly policies like this sent me packing…)

SF has effectively no mass transit accessible to folks from out of town. The real solution needed is better transit to all neighborhoods of SF, with parking lots at stations so that suburbanites can access the city and leave their cars at home. BART is great for the Mission and downtown, and CalTrain is great for, um, well, baseball games and not much else. Golden Gate Park? Crissy Field? Castro? Pac Heights? You need a car right now.

Until that changes, we need as many good ways to access the city as possible, or else relegate 101 to permanent gridlock. May as well build a wall at the San Mateo County line at that point.

By: Kristine Enea

Kristine Enea — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:30:49 +0000

To those who support this idea – please consider how much it would further isolate the residents of the southeast sector. We’re out in the boonies with few amenities. We do *not* need more housing out here. All we have is housing. If you tell me you want to tear down 280 so you can build grocery stores, bookstores, movie theaters, museums and a symphony hall, maybe I’ll reconsider, but for now, I say we need 280. Please don’t tell me that the Third Street Light Rail solves all our transit problems. It doesn’t. It’s slow, and for many of us, too far away to be useful. Besides, what was wrong with the 15 bus? Please, please, focus on making public transit more efficient, connected and convenient before causing more congestion for cars. People out here drive cars because there is no realistic alternative. We need 280! Long live 280!

By: John Murphy

John Murphy — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:44:30 +0000

I say we keep it but make it car free. This makes for some pretty good bike ridin’ and still cleans up the 4th/King mess.

By: Dave Snyder

Dave Snyder — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 18:41:55 +0000

For this to work, I-101 would have to be tolled to control congestion, as this other freeway becomes the alternative to I-280. The funds would help to pay for upgrades to Caltrain including the downtown extension.

Like the Central Freeway, this frees up some land for development, but not as much as you might think because most of the freeway is currently elevated over train tracks that we not only need to keep, but expand. Getting rid of the freeway may even reduce the cost of four-tracking and electrifying those tracks, as we don’t have to worry about the supports for the freeway being in the way.

I made a map of potentially developable lands (without really researching it; it’s a work in progress). They exist in three locations: a great deal in North Mission Bay (highly valuable land that ought to be high rise and mixed use); a few parcels near Cesar Chavez and 25th Street; and a large number of parcels near Silver Terrace, where the removal of the freeway will allow us to restore the street grid a little bit and build new hundreds of units of new housing, in types ranging from single family homes to duplexes to 40-60 story medium-density apartments, as appropriate.

here’s the map: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=115754620567580330132.000466a96e529f90333ad&ll=37.736555,-122.402882&spn=0.010555,0.021737&t=h&z=16

By: Tom Radulovich

Tom Radulovich — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:53:22 +0000

Keep hoping, Josh. I was reticent to be part of the joke, because I think this is a serious proposal (at least removing the portion from 101 north to King Street) whose time may have just come.

The next decade will see High Speed rail, along with much-enhanced commuter and inter-city service on the Caltrain line, and this should be the impetus to remove one of San Francisco’s biggest planning mistakes. Over $50 billion in transit improvements will provide better and more sustainable mobility up and down the Peninsula than the 280 stub 280 can.

I-280 was originally intended to continue along the waterfront and connect to the Embarcadero Freeway. With its original intent gone, all the portion north of 101 does is overload SoMa streets with traffic, blight the surrounding neighborhoods, and complicate the rail improvements.

Livable City is working to get several I-280 alternatives, including removing the freeway north of 101, studied as part of the High Speed Rail Environmental Review and the Eastern Neighborhoods Transportation Study.

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:10:09 +0000

I hate you for getting my hopes up. This is a dream of mine

By: Charles Siegel

Charles Siegel — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:09:35 +0000

Good joke, but of course it will never happen – just as they will never remove portions of the Embarcadero Freeway or Central Freeway.

By: Spence

Spence — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:52:09 +0000

Actually the Caltrain line already is tentatively planned to be undergrounded starting several miles south of 4th/King Sts. as part of the HSR project. You can see it in the CHSRA program EIR docs. that were created a number of years ago.

By: Brian Shields

Brian Shields — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:18:14 +0000

Thank Bob this is a joke. Can you imagine how insane S.F. Giants gamedays would be if this actually happened? The downtown streets would be so gridlocked the cars would have no choice but to run over the bicyclists.

On second thought…