Octavia Boulevard: "A jewel in our city"?

From Channel 7's story on how the 1989 earthquake improved San Francisco:

San Francisco's Central freeway is also gone. The elevated structure cutting across Market Street with ramps at Gough, Fell and Franklin was torn down, restoring sunlight to neighborhoods robbed of it for decades. The freeway now touches down at Market and Octavia where a tree-lined boulevard is anchored with a park. "That whole Hayes Valley area is a jewel in our city with wonderful shops because we took down a freeway that shouldn't have been there in the first place," said [Art]Agnos.

A neighborhood with 45,000 cars a day on its main street is a "jewel"?