San Francisco Transit Oriented Design

Coordinating architecture and movement in the San Francisco Bay Area

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The history of freeway creation, protest and removal has been well documented on many other sites, so I’ll leave it to the reader to perform their own due diligence.  This series is about what remains in the built environment.  Even after all of the Freeway Revolt, most of what had been built still stands, and they still serve as the main method of transit in San Francisco.  This fact is not likely to change any time soon, no matter how convenient BART, Cal Train and the ferries become.  So, I’ll instead discuss the landscape of our expressways, and how the personal automobile has shaped our city.

Imagine the Bay Bridge when it opened in 1936.  Originally designed to carry cars on only the top deck, the western approach touched down on Rincon Hill, and also near the existing 5th St. exit.  Until the construction of the Central Freeway and the connection to the Bayshore Freeway, the soon-to-be I-80 was almost innocuous.  The new freeways created a broad swath of cars only land use, right through vibrant neighborhoods.

As I wrote in the water and railroads post, the construction of highways typically follows existing roads, but this is not always the case.  The most damage comes when a street serving a neighborhood commercial district becomes a multi-lane, grade separated expressway.  Luckily the stalled construction of San Francisco’s highway grid didn’t disrupt *too* many homes and businesses.  To me, the more interesting aspects are the pieces that were actually built, but only in stages.

• Geary St Expressway.  Stretching roughly from Gough to Collins St, this Boulevard was one of the legacies of the infamous Redevelopment Agency.  Everything was done to make car access the sole purpose of this street, including the removal of the streetcar, and the exclusion of crosswalks at key intersections.  Thankfully, much of this is en route to being corrected with the Japantown Plan, and the creation of the Geary BRT.  If you like to dream, take a look at the powerpoint presentation created by rescuemuni.org.
• Webster St.  4 separated lanes, from Hayes to Bush.  Also created as part of the redevelopment in the 1960s, this was meant to be an expressway similar to Geary.  The only problem is that it really doesn’t connect to anything.  Restricted by the boundaries of the redevelopment district, the North-South alignment still serves very few people, and by all accounts is over sized.  Again, the Japantown Plan proposed to use the excess right-of-way to makes a park – a policy that should be continued the length of the street.
• San Jose Ave.  Southern extent of the planned Mission Freeway, from 280 north to Randall St.  Continuing the idea of a Freeway paralleling a major artery, the Mission Freeway was planned for the blocks between Mission and South Van Ness.  Only about 1 mile was built, mainly around the interchange with 280.  This is a textbook example of converting arteries to highways – just imagine how a Mission District would feel after being split in half.
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  Central Freeway proposal through the Inner Sunset, via foundsf.org

  Junipero Serra Blvd and Brotherhood Way.  Junipero Serra is 6 lanes until its norther terminus at Sloat, and Brotherhood Way connects Junipero with 280.  Both of these roads were constructed to expressway standards, with separated directions of travel, and wide shoulders.  Junipero Serra was planned to actually tunnel underneath large portions of the western side of the city.  It was essentially going to tunnel under Forest Hill, join with another highway alongside Laguna Honda and 7th Ave, and then tunnel under Golden Gate Park to join the Park Presidio freeway.  It’s amazing now to consider the costs incurred and the havok wreaked by such a plan.

There are plenty of other ’stubs’ around town, such as the Central Freeway and Doyle Drive, each with their own issues.  This is only meant to be a guide to look for other relics of past planning gone awry.  The next post will try to show more of what has been done to correct the mistakes of the past, but as we’ll find out, there isn’t much that can be done when a neighborhood becomes divided and housing torn out.

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