Central Freeway

The ongoing streetscape transformation on and around McCoppin Street in recent weeks has brought a new bike lane, raised crosswalks, planted bulb-outs and medians.

Last summer, we wrote about a package of overdue streetscape improvements planned for the neighborhood around McCoppin Street, which would include a public gathering space called the McCoppin Hub adjacent to the Central Freeway.

A car driver plowed through a bike corral on Saturday in front of Zeitgeist, a bar on the corner of Duboce Avenue and Valencia Street. The driver reportedly stopped and cooperated with police after crashing through 10 of the 11 curbside bike racks, breaking a man's leg, and wrecking at least a dozen parked bikes, according to the Uptown Almanac, which posted photos of the carnage.

Forty-seven year-old Sena Putra was killed by the driver of a gasoline tanker last Thursday at 13th and Folsom Streets under the Central Freeway. He is the seventh pedestrian killed in the city this year.

New markings are on the ground delineating the short two-way bikeway linking the Market and Octavia intersection to Valencia Street and the future site of the McCoppin Hub plaza.

Eight years ago, the Central Freeway fell, and the sky didn't. The neighborhood long obscured by the structure came up for a year-long breath of air during its reconstruction.

Residents just north of the Mission District who have lived in the shadow of the Central Freeway are beginning to see a glimmer of light. The city appears poised to move ahead with plans to bring street improvements and green space to the area, including a public plaza at the end of McCoppin Street that abuts the Octavia freeway onramp.

52-year-old Dr. Kevin Mack was killed while riding a UCSF shuttle van at about 6:20 am this morning when it crashed with a big rig truck at the intersection of Octavia Boulevard and Oak Street, said San Francisco Police Lt. Troy Dangerfield.

A few weeks ago in San Francisco, a number of urban farmers opened a gate in a chain-link fence at Laguna Street, between Oak and Fell Streets, and entered an overgrown lot that has been unused for nearly two decades. The farmers brought with them steaming piles of mulch, which they cast over the edge of the ramps formerly used by cars to enter and exit the elevated Central Freeway spur above Octavia Street, arranging the soil in rows for planting vegetables and filler crops.