After discussing the issue for 12 hours – including nine hours of uninterrupted public discussion – the SF Board of Supervisors simply granted permanent car-free status to a 1.5-mile stretch of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park.
Update (4/26, 9:22 p.m.): The Board of Supervisors has just approved JFK Drive Carless with a 7-4 margin in the debate, which began at 9 a.m. Tuesday morning and lasted until 9 p.m. Tuesday night.
Even in a year with about a million different download choices, the most high-profile public controversy in San Francisco seems to be the debate over making JFK Drive car-free. (Okay, maybe this is a close second behind the debate on making the Great Highway without cars). But the pandemic-era ban on the 1.5-mile car section of the Golden Gate Park’s main section proved so popular that Mayor Breed introduced legislation to make JFK car-free permanent.
And on Tuesday, the SF Board of Supervisors approved Breed’s proposal for a JFK without cars with a 7-4 margin, after 12 hours of debate and nine horrific hours of public comment. But the result has been known all along, as Chronicle’s JD Morris tweeted shortly after 9:30 a.m. Tuesday that “Superintendent Hillary Ronnen has just told me she will vote in favor of the mayor’s ordinance. JFK without cars now seems to have the majority of 6 votes it needs to pass the SF Supervisory Board. ”
UPDATE: Supervisor Hillary Ronnen has just told me she will vote in favor of the mayor’s ordinance. JFK without cars now seems to have the majority of 6 votes it needs to pass the SF Board of Supervisors.
some supes have not yet been weighed, so the final number of votes may be higher https://t.co/xr7CUTJ3a7
– JD Morris (@thejdmorris) April 26, 2022
Ronen and supervisors Catherine Stephanie and Aaron Peskin were the top voices of supervisors who had not previously announced how they would vote. (Stephanie also eventually voted for him, Peskin voted against.) Supervisors Connie Chan, Asha Safai and Shaman Walton have already opposed, with the rest of the board already registered as supporting JFK without cars before Tuesday’s meeting.
“The proposal before us does not ‘close’ JFK. I received thousands of emails reading “Don’t close JFK,” Supervisor Dean Preson said before the vote. “The question is whether it will continue to be a safe haven for pedestrians and cyclists, or return to a multi-injured street dominated by cars in the middle of Golden Gate Park.
“In my opinion, banning or restricting the use of a road by private cars does not mean ‘closing’ this road,” Preston continued. “In many ways, this opens it up to wider community use.”
As with every nine devilish public comment sessions at the San Francisco City Hall, you had some eccentrically presented comments. Like the one above who picked up his acoustic guitar with him and started his comment with “I’d like to sing a song…” And then he did just that.
In addition, one participating citizen offered a comment on Taco Bell (?!?) In support of keeping JFK Drive car-free.
And you could anticipate the vote based on the above video of interaction during the marathon’s public comment session. It doesn’t seem accurate to say that Supervisors Chan, Safai and Walton are lying. This exchange lasted several minutes and did not seem frivolous. It seems more accurate that these three Chan supervisors, Safai, were trapped in a strategic session on Chan’s opposition plan.
There were two different competing plans for JFK Drive; Breed’s all-car-free plan and competing version of supervisor Connie Chan, which will allow one-way traffic between 8th Avenue and Transverse Drive, and two-way car traffic on the Conservatory Drive behind the Conservatory of Flowers.
Image: SFGov TV
The car-free plan is incredibly popular, as Rec and Parks showed slides on Tuesday, noting that JFK Drive without cars has a 70% approval rating among San Francisco.
They even broke that support into neighborhoods. As can be seen below, Lake Merced is the only neighborhood with a small majority against JFK without cars. But the support of the car-free majority is a little softer in the areas of Chan and supervisor Shaman Walton, and as such they were the most vocal opposition.
Image: SFGovTV
Chan claims that the results are demographically distorted. “Who filled out the poll?” Chan said during Tuesday’s debate. “According to Rec and Parks in October, 60.6% were white. And then separately, 62.9% [had] without disabilities. These are the people who supported the complete closure of JFK Drive. “
She also claims: “There are duplicate IP addresses in the online survey” and “About 2000 [votes] are duplicated from the same IP address. “
Walton also condemned the effort as a movement of the white majority. “The closure did nothing to make Golden Gate Park more diverse,” he said Tuesday. you are also welcome that this space is reserved for certain classes of people, certain races, certain people by means. “
“Some people want to do this strictly for cars against no cars,” Walton said. “But the conversation has always been much bigger than that.”
Of course, this “conversation” could be influenced by the lobbying efforts of the Museum of the Young. SF Standard reported last month that both supervisors Walton and Asha Safai had spoken out against JFK without cars, coincidentally as soon as de Young lobbyists and the Academy of Sciences contacted them. (It should be noted that de Young and the Academy of Sciences have a special underground car park under the music hall, which is accessible from the opposite side of the park from JFK Drive.)
Walton seemed determined to undermine that argument. “I’m not worried about museums,” he said during Tuesday’s debate. “I am concerned about access to the park as a whole. This has nothing to do with museums. I care about the park, I don’t care about museums.
During these difficult nine hours of public commentary, which seems to never end, we first heard from the “Godfather of Skate” of the Church of 8 Wheels, the Rev. David Miles.
“I spent 43 years at Golden Gate Park,” Miles said on board. “I’ve never seen her there, I’ve never seen him there.” (It’s not clear if Miles meant Chan and Walton or other commenters.)
This post has been updated with the final vote.
Related: JFK Drive without cars gets boost from report on recreation and parks will eventually be up to Supes [SFist]
Image: SFCTA
Add Comment