Let’s relieve congestion on the Northern Waterfront and make our streets safer
If we are going to preserve what’s so special about this stretch of shoreline — its historic neighborhoods and natural beauty — we must address traffic and dangerous roadways.
San Francisco’s Northern Waterfront is part of what makes our District 2 neighborhoods amazing. Up against the Bay, the bustle of urban life washes away and we are taken up by the natural majesty of this special place.
But right now, this roughly 3.5-mile stretch of shoreline from Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge to Fisherman’s Wharf suffers from congestion, unsafe streets, and a lack of public transportation options to take us to the rest of the City. Governed by 6 different agencies, there’s no coordinated plan to confront the huge threats from sea-level rise and the hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure at risk to seismic events. And there’s no integrated vision or plan for how to find the neighborhood-serving tenants needed for the Palace of Fine Arts or to buttress Fort Mason’s arts and culture nonprofits. For too long, the City has failed to confront these threats. We must act now to preserve what we love most about the Northern Waterfront.
We must act now to preserve what we love most about the Northern Waterfront.
As your Supervisor, I will make preserving what’s special about the Northern Waterfront a top priority. I will also fight against the commercialization of the Northern Waterfront. Leaning on my experience bringing together the community with diverse stakeholders, I will drive the necessary public-private and interagency partnerships that will be needed to confront the threats to the Northern Waterfront.
Extending Street Car Service and Central Subway
For so many who live on the Northern Waterfront there is a dearth of public transit options for commutes to downtown, SoMa, or the rest of the region. For the million-plus visitors to Fort Mason every year, the lack of public transit options forces them to drive alone and clog up our neighborhood streets and make parking scarce. As Supervisor, I will work to confront the congestion and provide better transit options for residents via rail and water.
To start with, we should extend the Central Subway to Aquatic Park at the base of Russian Hill. This should have been part of the initial T-Third extension — which now only stop inChinatown — and would provide fast and reliable connectivity to jobs centers in the Financial District and SoMa, to AT&T Park and the future Warriors arena, and to the hospitals at Mission Bay. Without a champion in City Hall, this extension has been on the back-burner for almost a decade. Today, the SFMTA estimates it will take over 6 years from now just for the environmental review and engineering planning¹. As Supervisor, I will make delivering on this project a top priority and will use it as an opportunity to reform SFMTA’s broken project delivery process.
At the same time, the City should move forward with a simpler and already permitted rail project that will provide service to Fort Mason along the Northern Waterfront. Currently, the E/F line ends at Jones and Beach streets, but it should be extended along Beach Street to the parking lot at the Fort Mason Center, reopening the historic Fort Mason train tunnel that’s been closed since 1951.
This project could be done in two phases, with the first phase happening all on city-controlled property (Fort Mason is federal government land) by extending the train tracks to the eastern opening of the tunnel off Van Ness Avenue just south of Aquatic Park, connecting with the future Van Ness Rapid Transit buses. The Fort Mason Center and Market Street Railway estimate costs to be $30 million to $37.5 million for the first phase and $37.5 million for the second phase, with another $10 million for tunnel upgrades. The extension would also create more efficiency on both the E and F lines by separating their terminus points (they currently share a single track on Jones Street between Beach and Jefferson streets).
Current estimates make this extension to Fort Mason one of the SFMTA’s least expensive and quickest to deliver rail projects². As Supervisor, I will focus on finding the money and delivering this project as quickly as possible. Any extension project must also come with maintenance upgrades to dramatically improve on-time performance (45% on the F and 28% on the E as of June) and eliminate the frequent turn-backs to realize the full potential of this line for commuters. SFMTA should also explore the feasibility of putting modern light-rail vehicles alongside the historic streetcars to improve reliability and performance.
This upgraded rail investment would also benefit those commuting from the eastern Marina or Russian Hill to the job centers of the Embarcadero and Eastern SoMa. And it would take cars off our neighborhood streets, reducing congestion around Aquatic Park and along Marina Boulevard, Bay Street, and North Point Street.
‘Peopleway’ and Micro Ferries
Another signature project to increase access to Fort Mason is the proposed “peopleway” that would connect Fort Mason and Aquatic Park. The peopleway would allow cyclists and pedestrians to avoid the treacherous Fort Mason hill on their way from the Presidio and the Marina to North Beach and downtown. This project would also include street upgrades to the north end of Van Ness Avenue to transform what is essentially a large and awkward surface parking lot into an appropriately majestic approach to the Bay from the City’s main north-south artery.
But we can’t just focus on land transportation to help folks get around our congested peninsula. As a Director with WETA, the agency that operates the Bay ferries, I recently kicked off a project to study a micro-ferry service along the edge of the City from the East Harbor Marina adjacent to Fort Mason to the Ferry Building, down to AT&T Park, on to the hospitals and Warriors arena in Mission Bay, and finally to Hunters Point. This new transit option will give residents a quick and stunningly beautiful way of getting to work or to sporting events, and take cars off our congested streets.
Safer Streets and Less Congestion
We also need to create a more consistent parking policy around attractions like Marina Green. As it stands, commuters from the North Bay have access to the City’s most beautiful parking lot — and for free all day — between Marina Green and the Bay. This giveaway just creates more congestion in the area and makes streets less safe, and is the only free parking lot along the entire Northern Waterfront. Meanwhile, parking along the waterfront outside Fort Mason costs $3 per hour and is usually completely empty when there are not events at Fort Mason.
We must make our most dangerous intersections safer for everyone.
Bay Street and Van Ness Avenue is one of the City’s highest-collision intersections, with 21 major crashes from 2012–15³. Traffic-calming measures like dedicated left-turn lights and sidewalk bulb-outs, along with more dedicated enforcement, will boost safety. Laguna Street from Bay Street to Fort Mason is also dangerous and needs upgrades, particularly where Laguna bends and becomes Marina Boulevard. The bicycle path coming downhill from Upper Fort Mason meets a narrow sidewalk, making collisions between cyclists and pedestrians routine. And improvements need to be made to the intersection where Marina Boulevard and Mason Street fork at the entrance to the Presidio to reduce the chaos and ensure vehicles, bikes, and pedestrians can better co-exist there.
As Supervisor, I will work to preserve what we love most about the Northern Waterfront
As Supervisor, I will work to preserve what we love most about the Northern Waterfront while confronting the challenges of today and dealing with the threats of the future. I will work to deliver better transit options for residents to access their jobs, sporting events, and the hospitals at Mission Bay. I will work to reduce congestion and upgrade our most dangerous intersections. For too long City Hall has ignored the needs of our neighborhoods. There is much work to be done.
Note: This is the first in a three-part series on how we can address the challenges facing the Northern Waterfront from Aquatic Park to the Golden Gate Bridge — transportation, sea-level rise, seismic safety, and ensuring the great institutions of the Presidio, Golden Gate Park, and Fort Mason remain vibrant neighborhood hubs. Read Part 2 about sea-level rise and seismic safety here, and Part 3 about ensuring our great institutions continue to thrive here.
UPDATE: This story has been revised to clarify my position on the Northern Waterfront after receiving feedback from members of the community.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS: To protect what we love most about the Northern Waterfront we must come together, as a community. I want to know how you think we can best confront the great challenges we’re facing. Send ideas to NickJ@NickJosefowitz.com.
- http://www.sfexaminer.com/planning-begins-central-subway-extension-fishermans-wharf/
- https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports/2016/Draft%20Rail%20Capacity%20Strategy.pdf, Page 32
- https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports/2016/San%20Francisco%20Collisions%20Report%202012%202015.pdf, Page 13
Over the coming months leading up to the November election, I will be sharing stories and data about the top challenges we face in San Francisco — from homelessness and property crime to street safety and neighborhood-specific priorities for District 2. I’ll explore tactics used in other cities and whether they resulted in any meaningful changes. And I’ll present datasets that offer insights into what can be done differently by our city government.
Paid for by Nick Josefowitz for Supervisor 2018. Financial disclosures are available at sfethics.org.
