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When I was in the fifth grade in New York City, we learned about the human body in science class. Some forward-thinking educator had the idea of taking us on a series of field trips called Urban Adventures, during which we visited different places in the city and compared them to human systems.
Some of these trips — the meat market as the digestive system and the NYC Sanitation Department dump as the excretory system — probably stuck in my classmates’ minds for a long time.
The whole concept definitely sparked my passion, and it set me on the path of becoming an urban planner, a profession I’ve enjoyed for more than 25 years.
Fast-forward to 2003, I was a mom of two in the suburbs, but found myself wanting to bring up my daughter and son in a place where we wouldn’t have to be tethered to a car, both for quality of life and for environmental reasons. I also wanted to live where my son, who has a craniofacial anomaly that causes a variety of disabilities, could thrive with a diversity of people and lifestyles and opportunities.
So we moved to San Francisco, where we’ve raised both kids to adulthood and can access all we need by foot, bike, and transit, as well as by car when the other choices are too inconvenient.
I’ve also had the joy and privilege of being a planner in SF for almost 17 years, first in the Planning Department and then as planning director for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), a position I left around six months ago.
Throughout the pandemic, I focused on planning for recovery — for the “after” time — and led SFMTA’s work on the Golden Gate Park Access & Safety Program, which includes the car-free route along JFK Drive, Middle Drive, and MLK Drive.
As many of you know, the fight over JFK Drive has been one of the most heated debates in COVID-era SF, and it’s not over yet. The Board of Supervisors will likely vote this month on the recommended plan, which I helped craft, to keep cars off the 1.5-mile eastern stretch of the roadway.
As I learned in the fifth grade, a city’s transportation system is like a person’s circulatory system, and its parks and open spaces are the lungs. The JFK Promenade, which the car-free stretch of JFK is now called, supports the health of both. It’s a safe route that makes walking and rolling a comfortable and attractive option for more people going to more places.
It also has removed a bottleneck for people moving north-south by bus, a benefit that hasn’t gotten nearly the consideration it deserves. What was once a car-dominated, unpleasant thoroughfare — and one of the city’s most dangerous — is now a true place of refuge and renewal.
There’s no single organ in the body that operates on its own or that is enough to keep our bodies healthy and fully functioning. JFK Promenade itself is important and marvelous, but it’s also a crucial piece of a transportation network that enables the type of efficient travel approaches that SF needs and should be wholeheartedly embracing and supporting based on its adopted policies. That network expands throughout the city in its bike lanes, its sidewalks, and with the newest addition, slow streets.
The beauty of car-free and car-light roadways like JFK Promenade and slow streets is that they enable strolling or riding bikes in all sorts of ways. For example, I can ride side by side with my husband or a friend and talk. I don’t have to feel like I’m inconveniencing fast riders behind me when I just want to noodle along slowly, taking in the street life.
Slow streets don’t involve much physical change, and despite the active controversy about them I have yet to hear convincing evidence that they’re truly compromising anyone’s ability to get where they need to go by car. Our network of safe, comfortable, and convenient ways to get around has grown by leaps and bounds over the past two years, and it’s something we need to steward as a city for our health in the decades to come.
Change is good
While a refuge, a car-free JFK Drive remains part of an urban system. Changing access to it has affected all who are part of that system, and that’s a good thing.
It doesn’t just shut out cars. The recommended plan includes a better park shuttle, more ADA parking, cheaper access to the park’s underground garage, better transit to the park, and more programming (like live music) for Black and brown and equity priority communities.
Despite the controversy over slow streets, I have yet to hear convincing evidence that they’re truly compromising anyone’s ability to get where they need to go by car.
The plan addresses concerns that a car-free JFK could affect SF’s BIPOC communities — a legitimate and necessary question. But as I see it, inequity doesn’t come from a car-free JFK Drive; it comes from unequal access to recreational and cultural opportunities for and from different neighborhoods. On top of that, the degree to which low-income and disabled people depend on cars, with their associated costs and burdens, is inequitable. Keeping JFK Drive available to cars won’t solve for equity. It’s just taking an aspirin to mask the fever when an infection is raging in the body, or in the city.
When the supervisors vote on JFK Drive in coming weeks, the only tolerable outcome will be approval of the full slate of recommendations. I feel this way not just because I use and enjoy the car-free route, but also because it’s an opportunity to change our approach to leadership.
SF’s governance structure makes us ill-equipped to deal with complicated problem-solving — and it gets even more complicated in Golden Gate Park, with overlapping agencies and jurisdictions. This is why the supervisors have the ultimate vote on car-free streets in the park.
Provincialism vs. priorities
Unfortunately, the district supervisor setup in the city is also a barrier to bolder action. Throughout the pandemic, some supervisors have treated car-free JFK like the district elected officials that they are, and not like the leaders of a city that must position itself for a changed future, which is what they need to be.
One example is Sup. Connie Chan’s proposal to let cars cut through the park and across JFK Drive at 8th Avenue, which she brought forth without the benefit of any analysis or evidence of professional judgment. It seems to only serve as a shortcut for drivers between the Richmond and the Sunset, which is a safety hazard and a detriment to riders of the 44 O’Shaughnessy. This shortcut wasn’t permitted before the pandemic. It’s a transportation solution based on politics, not on adopted policy priorities.
The 8th Avenue plan and the problem it appears to be solving was never even considered by a working group, which at the behest of Chan’s predecessor Sandra Lee Fewer, was formed soon after JFK Drive closed down in April 2020 to give San Franciscans more socially distanced recreational space.
[UPDATE: Several hours after this was published, Sup. Chan introduced legislation to open a chunk of JFK Drive to one-way car traffic. Her alternative disregards solutions that have already been adopted to allow passenger drop-off at major park attractions, and it reverts back to the idea that cars on JFK Drive are the only acceptable access for some. It also disregards community input that Chan herself requested — in which this exact alternative was “highly disfavored” by the public. See page 22 here.
The District 1 supervisor told the SF Chronicle that her alternative would improve traffic flow around the park; SFMTA analysis has already shown that the closure has had minimal impact. What’s more, the city has specifically prioritized safety and transit over traffic flow. In other words, Chan’s proposal is in direct conflict with the strategic plans of the Recreation and Parks Department and the SFMTA, SF’s General Plan, and essentially every adopted city policy. In my view, this proposal is a true failure of the kind of leadership we need.]
Despite its origin as then-Sup. Fewer’s attempt to kick a tough decision down the road, the working group over many months led to a key understanding and perspective that we need to bring to all matters of change. Instead of just talking about who is allowed to use JFK Drive and how and when they can use it, the group took a broader consideration of access to and through Golden Gate Park for all users, and how well that is or isn’t served.
Not every member of the group was working in good faith toward a solution. We spent many hours of staff time on access to the de Young Museum for everyone, including staff, patrons, and delivery people. I didn’t see any evidence that the de Young was interested in making the change work. Conversely, the museum used every avenue to oppose it.
It became apparent to me that one reason we had been stuck on this matter for decades was the city’s car-centered approach to park access. If the easiest way to reach the park was by car, of course making JFK Drive car-free would mean a big loss of park access. Furthermore, JFK Drive car access was being considered in a vacuum, without the necessary steps to consider the entire matter of how people move to and around the park and beyond.
So that takes us back to the full package of solutions in the staff recommendation. The improved shuttle and the bandshell parking lot will address access for people with limited mobility. Revamping the garage will make car-based drop-offs easier and parking for some SF residents cheaper. Muni buses will get to, and through, the park faster and more frequently.
For those unwilling to let go of the status quo, their resistance is understandable. But I contend that it’s untenable to try and maintain the status quo. Our world is changing and we need to start building a system that doesn’t rely on cars as the best or sometimes only mode of access.
Making one street in one park car-free isn’t going to significantly alter the way San Francisco gets around. We won’t be able to point to this action and say this is what will make all the difference. But our leaders need to start acting in a way that reflects our reality: that every decision they make must contribute to the overall change we have no choice but to make.
As the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report acknowledges, every single decision, investment, and policy matters. We know what needs to be done. Here in San Francisco, we have the resources to get there equitably. But do we have the courage and the will? Have we elected true leaders or just politicians?
Back in the fifth grade, I learned about the physical systems of people and of cities. What we didn’t spend much time talking about were the not-physical systems — the brain, the soul, the spirit. As we know now, as important as the heart and lungs and muscles are, mental health and attitude have a huge influence on our health.
San Francisco’s recently adopted Climate Action Plan calls for 80 percent of all trips in the city to be low-carbon, which will only happen with significant reallocation of street space away from cars. We have already begun to do it with our neighborhood slow streets. While JFK Drive is only one street and Golden Gate Park is only one park, it is a much bigger symbol of our civic imagination and collective will. Our elected leaders need to think beyond the immediate politics and instead embrace real change.
