New park to be built on top of highway tunnels near Golden Gate Bridge

The San Jose Mercury News ^ | November 6, 2019 | Paul Rogers, Bay Area News Group

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

In the latest step toward the rebirth of San Francisco’s Presidio from an aging former Army base to a bright light of America’s national park system, crews are set to break ground Thursday on a project to build a new 14-acre public park on top of two freeway tunnels near the Golden Gate Bridge.

When finished in 2021, the unusual project, called Tunnel Tops, will link Crissy Field, on San Francisco’s waterfront, to the Presidio’s Main Post, parade grounds and visitor’s center. That connection was severed more than 80 years ago when the road to and from the Golden Gate Bridge, formerly known as Doyle Drive, split the landscape in half.

The new park, roughly the size of 10 football fields, will stretch over the top of the roadway, and be free to the public. Part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, it will include trails, gardens, a campfire circle, community plaza, youth education center, and thousands of native plants, trees and overlooks across San Francisco Bay.

“It’s not often you get to create new parkland in a highly urban environment,” said Jon Jarvis, who approved the project as director of the National Park Service from 2009 to 2017. “This is an extraordinary opportunity.”

The project’s cost is estimated at about $110 million. It will be funded largely by the private donations raised by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, a non-profit group based in San Francisco.

Work is being overseen the Presdio Trust, a federal agency created by Congress after the Army base closed in 1994 and the land was transferred to the National Park Service. The Trust runs most of the Presidio, and is responsible for restoring its historic buildings and keeping the site financially self-sufficient through rents and other revenues.

[bluejean]

Tunnel Tops? What an idiotic name.

[sauropod]

bkmk

[Syncro]

SF made some new rules lately.

It’s alright to camp anywhere.

It’s alright to urinate in public.

It’s alright to block a sidewalk.

It’s alright to solicit for sex.

So a person can pitch a tent that covers the sidewalk from the road to the buildings.
And can come out of the tent and pee on the sidewalk.

If he sees a girl he can ask her for sex.

All legal.

Paging Feinstein and Pelosi.

And whoever is mayor now.

Newsome was mayor a while ago.

Now he is governor of CA.

[Syncro]

The new park...will... be free to the public.***

Yeah, but parking will be $15 probably.

With the new rules I posted a few minutes ago, I imagine it will be a giant homeless campground.

[ronnie raygun]

A place for the homeless

[sphinx]

I've only been to SF a few times, mostly business trips, and have only been to Fort Point and the Presidio once. (I wanted to see Fort Point and, answering a challenge years ago from Ed Bearss, to find Edward Baker in the Presidio cemetery.) So I don't know the area well. But … this is one of the most spectacular natural settings imaginable. An interstate highway splitting a park and cutting the shoreline off from the main park area is obviously something to fix. As long as the Presidio was an active military installation, that was not an issue, but once it became a park, the parameters changed.

I suppose the expense is driven by the fact that the road being covered is U.S. 1/101 leading across the Golden Gate Bridge. It's a dual lane, high speed expressway with massive traffic volume. So it's a big project. This isn't a place where you could install a couple of stoplights and create an at-grade pedestrian crossing to connect the two pieces of the park. Is it worth the price? Well, given the setting, yes. SF wastes plenty of money on liberal lunacies. Recovering parkland and covering an unsightly highway right at the Golden Gate is a good investment.

[a fool in paradise]

They are burying I-45 and I-59 in Houston and building a park over them as well. Tunnels in Houston when we are at sea level.

And in San Francisco where there are earthquakes. Were the tunnels always there or only since the closing of the Presidio?

Are any other cities going this route? Is every city modeling off of Boston’s “Big Dig”?

[sphinx]

One has to take each of these projects on its own merits. I don't know enough about most of the cities involved to have a sensible opinion on the options. But it does seem to be clear that the center of gravity has shifted among urban planners and that highway planners are being dragged along, often unwillingly. A half a century ago, urban interstates were all the rage. The idea was to "open up" the city by driving expressways through it. Again, one has to take these projects on a case by case basis, but it is clear that the planners of the time seriously underestimated the destructive impacts of urban freeways on the neighborhoods they crossed, as well as the neighborhoods into which they dumped huge numbers of automobiles.

The battle lines here are often drawn between suburbanites who like high speed expressways into center cities, vs. city residents who understand the blight that such roads often produce. Tunnels are one solution to at least some neighborhood disruption issues. If tunnels have become a more frequent choice in recent years, it's at least partly because tunneling technology has advanced and tunnels are a lot less expensive than they used to be. Although they're still not cheap.

Personally, I live in the city, and I am opposed to the destruction of viable, livable neighborhoods in order to create commuter sewers for people who choose to live 30 miles away from their jobs. The suburban cowboys can learn to take the train. Or take a bus; the dedicated commuter busses (as opposed to regular city metro busses) are very nice. Or at least carpool. The percentage of carpoolers has been inching up, and that's good, but a majority of commuters still drive alone. I can't muster any enthusiasm for compromising the livability of urban neighborhoods to build express lanes and parking lots. In the long run, population and congestion will continue to increase. People will need to start living closer to their jobs, or take the train, whether they want to or not. Sacrificing close-in neighborhoods to accommodate long distance car commuters is getting the priorities exactly backwards.

[Justa]

It’s a SCAM. And Pelosi controls $$ it.

“Work is being overseen the Presdio Trust, a federal agency created by Congress after the Army base closed in 1994 and the land was transferred to the National Park Service. “

See, it’s NPS property so no federal taxes. Then PT, a ‘federal agency’ “oversees” it and also pays no state or federal taxes. PT then runs for-profit businesses on it and disperses money to its board via pading expense reports and outright fraud. A federal NPS property run by a ‘federal agency’ which pays no state or federal taxes so no oversight. Only the US DOJ has jurisdiction over. It’s a SCAM. This is what Congress is using federal lands for now. To run private-public scams.

[a fool in paradise]

In Houston they are just going to lay down 20 (or more) lanes of flat traffic in low lying ground and then build a roof over it and put grass on top of that. One of the highways is already there (elevated) and adjacent to it are businesses that have stood for over 50 years. All of those business owners will be forced to relocate or go out of business so a masterplan can go into play.

The other interstate is going to be rerouted to push traffic there. And the old Pierce Elevated may not be demolished (which is where I-45 used to go), there are plans to turn that piece of elevated highway into a greenspace park too.

And there are also neighborhoods to the north that will be affected by the rerouting of I-45. But real estate developers run Houston so none of this ever went to a public vote.

http://swamplot.com/the-5-wackiest-images-from-txdots-plans-to-reroute-i-45-and-abandoned-the-pierce-elevated/2015-04-23/ (2015)

[John O]

(since we are talking opinions)

viable, livable neighborhoods

Well there's the problem right there. There is NO such thing as a viable livable neighborhood in any big city. No matter how you dress up a slum full of too many people, it is still a slum.

The suburban cowboys can learn to take the train.

John Rocker was exactly correct. Cars are safe, trains and busses are war zones waiting to happen and the only safe way to travel on them is with the Bernhard Goetz method (being prepared to kill everyone you meet)

Or at least carpool.

This could be viable if you can find a suitable armed conservative to carpool with.

I can't muster any enthusiasm for compromising the livability of urban neighborhoods

Urban neighborhoods are almost by definition unlivable. They lack the most basic elements of freedom and a good life.

People will need to start living closer to their jobs, or take the train, whether they want to or not.

Or better yet move the jobs out into the hinterland and out of the slums. Fortunately technology is letting many people live in sane (livable) areas while teleworking with city firms. I expect more and more of this to happen

Again, just my opinions. I lived in two cities of over a million and I now avoid going into the slums as much as I can. And if I do have to go into the slum (city) I take the expressway to the safest exit for my destination and then escape as quickly as I can once my business is complete. Please note that I do understand that some people actually like living in that environment. But I guess we are all a little insane in our own way. :)

[a fool in paradise]

>>This is what Congress is using federal lands for now. To run private-public scams.

Yep I’ve noticed the “private-public” scams that are going on and the privatization of public resources.

The citizens are getting screwed and the elites are amassing wealth off of public entities.

[a fool in paradise]

Exxon, the central post office, and even the Houston Chronicle (ra ra cheerleader for downtown development) have moved out of downtown Houston.

[Vermont Lt]

Putting the highway underground in Boston was the best thing they did in centuries.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

The tunnels were recently added. As far as I know, the original Doyle Drive was an elevated freeway.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

I was in Europe in 1986, prior to its EU/Eurabia days. It was a very nice place back then. I wouldn’t set foot over there now, except maybe for Poland and Hungary.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

And it’s mostly private money, too. This is basically a public-private partnership funded mostly through philanthropy, so people don’t have to pay to enter the park. Now if they can just keep the poopers and sickos out, it will be great.

As far as US 101 goes, its new configuration (Presidio Parkway) is apparently 3 lanes in one direction and 4 lanes in the other.

[sphinx]

I am all in favor of telecommuting. And everything else being equal, I would take a job in a small town or smaller city over a job in the big city every time. BUT … everything else is never equal, and most of us face other choices. A good city neighborhood lives a lot like a small town. You can have everything within walking distance. Even if you have a commute, it’s two miles, not 20 or 30, and you can do it by car, bike, bus, metrorail, Uber, or even walk in a pinch. You get back the 3 or 4 hours a day (and often more) that the suburbanites are spending in their cars. A lot depends on having acceptable and affordable schools for your kids, and excessive crime can be a dealbreaker, but if those thresholds are met, I’d much rather live in the city as opposed to a distant suburb where I’d be tied to the car for absolutely everything beyond mowing the yard.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

In my case, I’m going to be doing my 30+ mile commute for a loooooong time, because the count where my job is (Montgomery County, MD) is run by lunatics who let illegal alien child-raping monsters out on bail so ICE can’t deal with them. Parts of the county are also infested with MS-13 sub-humans.

Otherwise, I would try to move down there, because there are apartment buildings around the Metro station next to my place of work (transit-oriented development) that would work out great for me, as well as a grocery store and a CVS just down the street. It would especially work out if some of them were condos, so I could effectively transfer my home equity down there.

As far as the existing highways go, fund as much of future major improvements and rehabilitation as you can with tolls. That would impose a direct cost on long-distance commutes. Leave a given stretch of highway free until it needs the improvement, then impose tolls after its done. (As for me, I will be willing to pay the toll to stay out of lunatic-infested Montgomery County for the time being.)

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

This is the kind of improvement in which I would recommend funding as much as possible with tolls. Hopefully, that will keep the improvement from becoming a 20-lane parking lot.