Supervisor Jake McGoldrick: Timing not right for closing JFK

Last month, the SF Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee once again considered Supervisor Matt Gonzalez's proposal for partial closure of John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park on Saturdays.

Gonzalez has worked very hard to advance the recreational uses of our great treasure, Golden Gate Park and I appreciate those efforts. I agree with the goals of Gonzalez's legislation, which are to provide a safe pedestrian and recreational environment within Golden Gate Park, free from the dangers of automobile traffic. I also appreciate the incredible amount of work and passion that have gone into developing this proposal by the advocates for Saturday closure. The people supporting closure are good people working on behalf of alternative transportation and pedestrian safety.

My office continues to work with these advocates to expand the number of bicycle lanes serving the Richmond District, create safer streets for Richmond pedestrians and increase the reliability of transit serving our district.

Nevertheless, I disagree with my allies on this issue. This is not the time for JFK Saturday closure. Although I supported the 2000 ballot measure that would have closed JFK on Saturdays, the voters defeated that measure. In the Richmond, the vote against Saturday closure was more than 60 percent. Since that time, I have developed a great appreciation for the many outstanding issues that must be resolved if closure is ever to happen in a manner that is sensitive to neighbors of Golden Gate Park and all of the park's users.

As is usually the case, the wisdom of the voters has been proven correct. The timing is just not right for a change that would have such significant effects on both the neighborhoods at the east end of Golden Gate Park and the visitors to the park who are using the park for other than biking and skating. Both the North Park and the North Panhandle neighborhoods surrounding the northeast corner of the park will feel significant negative impacts from the changes proposed by Gonzalez's legislation.

Gonzalez proposes Saturday closure take place at the same time other significant changes are being instituted in the east end of the park. If Saturday closure is to occur, it is crucial that the City consider how all of these changes related to Golden Gate Park will impact the surrounding neighborhood. This has not adequately been done, in my view.

The North Park neighborhood already is feeling the impacts of changes taking place at the east end of the park. The M.H. de Young Memorial Museum rebuild has excavated huge amounts of dirt from the site, which been trucked along Fulton Avenue by diesel trucks, expelling exhaust into the surrounding neighborhood. My office was able to lessen the impact of this pollution on the neighborhood by working with the museum to disperse trucks along alternate routes.

Other significant changes will include Concourse garage excavation and the Academy of Sciences' rehabilitation. These also will significantly affect the surrounding neighborhoods. Given the timing of such significant changes, this is not the time to add an additional burden on these neighborhoods by diverting Saturday traffic from JFK over to Fulton, a roadway that often resembles a thoroughfare.

We continue to struggle through traffic enforcement to slow traffic on Fulton Street, but efforts to do so have met with mixed success, at best. Saturday closure would put additional traffic on weekends on Fulton Street at the same time that we are adding additional truck traffic during the week and possibly some weekends. In the future, Saturday traffic would be compounded by traffic entering the new concourse garage from Fulton Street.

I remain at a loss as to why Saturday closures cannot wait until the changes to the east end of the park have been completed in a few years. If the advocates for closure were willing to set up a time-table in cooperation with the institutions and develop a community-based plan with the neighborhoods to mitigate impacts of any closure, I would support such efforts. But this has not taken place, despite a good faith effort by Supervisor Tom Ammiano to establish such a process.

Even with such a community process, it is possible that Saturday closure would have impacts on the neighborhood and on other park users that could never be sufficiently mitigated to justify its imposition. Thus, I am left with the responsibility to represent the constituents of District 1, who remain overwhelmingly opposed to the closure as proposed. I must therefore oppose Supervisor Gonzalez's Saturday closure proposal and I will be asking my colleagues to join me in that effort.

Jake McGoldrick is a San Francisco supervisor representing District 1 and the chair of the SF Board of Supervisor's Land Use Committee.