For many San Franciscans, the closure of John F. Kennedy Drive’s eastern half to cars in Golden Gate Park has been a silver lining in a cloudy year. The 1.5-mile stretch of road has become a haven for pedestrians, cyclists, various kinds of skaters, and other motorless folks who can now cruise and roam without worrying about traffic or social proximity. Not everyone, however, is a fan.
Board of Supervisors president Shamann Walton spoke out last month against the prospect of making the car ban permanent, saying it was elitist and segregationist, and raised issues of access for disabled people, low-income residents, and residents of neighborhoods not near the park. Sup. Ahsha Safaí also tweeted his support for reopening JFK Drive to cars. Short of going back to pre-pandemic days, when JFK Drive was open to cars six days a week, neither supervisor has offered any alternative proposals or novel solutions.
In the wake of the two supervisors’ comments, The Frisc reached out to activists, city agencies, and elected officials to gather ideas about how to make a car-free JFK work for everyone. One suggestion in particular kept coming up: Make parking in the underground Music Concourse Garage free for the disabled, low-income people, and even for residents that live some distance from the park. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong.
What we’ve learned is that the garage is managed by a strange and elusive nonprofit staffed by trustees and board members of Golden Gate Park’s institutions, and that this nonprofit is the only entity with the power to adjust parking rates or introduce exemptions. It’s another example of how a solvable problem in San Francisco can become stymied … by the city’s workings themselves.
A space in the sun
One argument for reopening JFK Drive to cars is that it would restore a stretch of free parking, including 18 ADA spots, near the park’s premier institutions: the de Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences. Critics of the car ban contend that the elimination of these spaces forces museum-goers to choose between stashing their vehicle in the pricey underground garage and parking far away from the institutions.
Turns out the Recreation and Park Department has already replaced most of the 18 lost ADA spots. Since the COVID-related closure of JFK Drive to cars, the agency has implemented six new ADA spaces (including five surrounding the intersection of Nancy Pelosi Drive and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive), and converted five others behind the bandshell into full-time ADA spots that were previously only available on Saturdays. Three more ADA spaces will be installed on Nancy Pelosi Drive at JFK Drive in the coming weeks, according to Rec and Park.
One weekend afternoon, The Frisc found that there were no available spaces on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive or Nancy Pelosi drives within a half-mile of the institutions. There was ample parking, including disabled spaces, available on Stow Lake Drive, just under half a mile from the museums. (The Music Concourse and the underground garage remain open to cars for free pickups and drop-offs.)
One solution would be to make parking in the 800-spot garage free (or at least much cheaper) for the disabled, low-income people, and even for residents that live far from the park. The de Young already offers free general admission to people with disabilities and visitors receiving food assistance — why not let those folks park for free too?
According to longtime car-free JFK advocate and “Godfather of Skate” David Miles Jr., activists have been calling for a parking exemption for these populations for years. He’s not alone. Miriam Newcomer, spokesperson for the de Young, said that the museum agrees that garage pricing is too high. “We’ve also been advocating for lowered rates in the garage but to little effect,” she told The Frisc. “We also had wanted to offer exemptions for those with ADA needs, and would love to have the ability to offer free parking with museum admission.”
Rec and Park spokesperson Tamara Aparton confirmed this via email: “Through the JFK Working Group process, the de Young has indicated it believes the garage rates are high, particularly for its hourly employees,” she said, referring to several ongoing working groups involving the SFMTA and the SFCTA transit agencies.
So who is actually in charge of how much garage parking costs? Proposition J, the 1998 ballot initiative that authorized construction of the garage, also established a nonprofit to manage the garage. According to the proposition, it initially fell to this nonprofit, the Golden Gate Parking Concourse Authority (GGPCA), to set a fee for garage parking. The fee was then subject to review from Rec and Park and approval from the Board of Supervisors.
The GGPCA transferred management of the garage to the Music Concourse Community Partnership (MCCP), and in 2008, the MCCP fired its CFO after he lost $3.6 million of the nonprofit’s funding betting on the stock market. The MCCP successfully raised garage rates in 2009, 2010, and 2012, when then-president Martha Kropf revealed that the nonprofit was in arrears to City Park, the private garage operator (now known as Impark). Rates have since been raised at least once more (the weekend rate for a day of parking was raised to $28 in 2012 and is now $33), but there is little documentation of MCCP’s activities over the last nine years. (Garage rates change by the same process through which they were first implemented: MCCP proposes a change, Rec and Park reviews it, and then the Board of Supervisors OKs it.)
According to 2019 tax documents, MCCP has eight employees and directors. Five of them are connected to the institutions. Two are on governing boards of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, made up of the de Young and the Legion of Honor. Two more are trustees at the Academy of Sciences. Another, Mike McGee, is the academy’s CFO. So why is the de Young having so much trouble securing lower rates? The answer may be that this nonprofit is simply not involved in broader conversations about the park. No MCCP representative appears on the SFCTA’s list of JFK Drive working group members. The phone number on the nonprofit’s website has no voice mailbox, and The Frisc was unable to reach its board members by phone or email.
This garage nonprofit is not involved in conversations about Golden Gate Park. None of its representatives appear on JFK Drive working groups; the phone number on the nonprofit’s website has no voice mailbox, and The Frisc was not able to reach its board members.
Activists have taken notice. Matt Brezina of People Protected said David Alexander of the Richmond Family Transportation Network drafted a resolution asking that management of the garage be transferred to the SFMTA. Last fall a group of advocates including Alexander and Brezina brought the resolution before PROSAC, an advisory committee of Rec and Park, but so far there has been no change. With mounting pressure, however, a reckoning could be on the horizon.
Shuttle diplomacy
Outside the convoluted process to secure parking reductions or subsidies, there are other ways to increase access to Golden Gate Park. One idea is to run “park express” versions of regular bus routes on the weekends, or other types of shuttles, to and from select neighborhoods.
With Muni buses operating with reduced capacity and at just 70% of pre-pandemic service hours, it’s less convenient than ever to travel to Golden Gate Park by public transit. Sup. Walton told a local news site that it takes “a couple of hours” to get to the park from southeast San Francisco. Muni mishaps and traffic congestion may be common in SF, but that’s not exactly right; according to Google Maps, it takes about one hour to get to the Academy of Sciences from Potrero Hill, Bernal Heights, Visitacion Valley, and Candlestick Point on transit, and about 40 minutes with no transfers from Third Street and Palou Avenue in the Bayview.
Walton declined to comment and Sup. Safaí did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The implementation of weekend shuttles would be a clear example of outreach to neighborhoods long isolated from the rest of the city, including the southeast neighborhoods. Unfortunately, the SFMTA’s budget crisis and shortage of operators might prevent even the restoration of full pre-COVID service, to say nothing of new weekend routes.
An SFMTA spokesperson declined to address this proposal specifically, but said that the agency would be “studying a host of options to connect people to Golden Gate Park.”
In a statement to The Frisc, Sarah Owens, a spokesperson for Mayor London Breed, said City Hall is monitoring the JFK issue: “The mayor has tasked the SFMTA and the Recreation and Park Department with analyzing the effect of the vehicle closure on accessibility and traffic, while working with stakeholders such as the disability community, the museums, transportation advocates, and the surrounding community to identify a long-term solution for JFK Drive. While that happens, city departments are working on near-term solutions to some of the concerns.” Owens declined to share any specific solutions or comment on existing proposals.
The fate of JFK Drive, like that of the now-infamous Ferris wheel, may ultimately rest in the hands of San Francisco’s supervisors. District 6’s Matt Haney said that if the issue does come to the Board of Supervisors, it may not be until early next year, and that the City Attorney has not briefed supervisors on the situation.
Haney pointed out he would vote in favor of making JFK Drive permanently car-free, but he also expressed hope that the supervisors can avoid a battle: “If we can bring people together before there is a showdown around this, and address some of the very real access issues that exist in our city more broadly when it comes to transit or recreational activities… and as part of making JFK car-free could also improve access and equity to the park and transit service, that would be a win-win.”
A workable outcome that’s acceptable to the various parties seems to be something San Francisco could pull off; Slow Streets and parklets happened rather quickly in response to the pandemic. “There may need to be changes to street access all over the city at any time,” Haney said, “and it seems like in most cases, that should be within the discretion of the SFMTA or Rec and Park in this case as well.”
But JFK Drive is now a big meatball on our spaghetti plate of bureaucratic committees and official purviews and political agendas, and everyone has their forks and knives out. “It’s one of those odd things, similar to the Ferris wheel,” added Haney, “where my first response was ‘The board has to vote on that? Why?’”
Max Harrison-Caldwell writes about local news and skateboarding in San Francisco.
