Anti-car in SF: Closing the Great Highway
From: Judi Gorski <judigorski@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 1, 2021 11:57 AM
To: Gordon Mar <gordon.mar@sfgov.org>
Subject: Lower Great Highway Videos & Photos
Dear Gordon,
I’ve tried to not bother you during this time while you and your family are grieving. I’m sensitive to how difficult it is to carry on with a heavy heart.
I appreciate that your comments to the public on Tuesday, June 22, 2021, realistically acknowledged the need for opening the Great Highway to alleviate the dangers in the neighborhood from the diverted traffic.
Your advocacy for a compromise, open to traffic weekdays and closed to traffic weekends, is a reasonable temporary solution and will help to calm our present situation.
When you fully closed it temporarily, you promised to fully open it when the Emergency was over. I’m sure you can understand why this has left your negatively impacted constituents with major trust issues. I hope the legislation you write and the way you vote will back up your words.
The special interest, no compromise/anti-car 24/7-closure group, by and large, does not live close enough to the highway to be impacted 24/7 the way we are. We have the traffic at our front doors. We have big rigs taking down our phone and power lines. We have motorcycle groups racing down our streets, blowing through stop signs, disturbing the peace, and endangering our lives.
We have a valid urgent need for the highway to be open, for emergency responders to have access to it, and to be able to drive on the highway as our way in and out of the city if a big earthquake renders other roads impassable.
Published in The Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon yesterday, MTA’s quote:
“Following the opening of the block between Santiago and Taraval streets in May, we cleaned up and demobilized the next block between Taraval and Ulloa streets. Since Friday, June 25, the northbound lane of Lower Great Highway have fully opened to vehicular traffic.”
Not true. The northbound lane between Ulloa & Taraval was still closed on June 25, 2021, is still closed today, and is blocked by their staging equipment....
Without oversight or consequences, MTA, RPD & CTA are all free to say and do whatever they want and force their predetermined agenda on citizens who have no recourse.
The majority of the bicyclists claiming how great it is for families to recreate on the 4 traffic lanes, and praising a car-free highway as being helpful to the environment, are actually adding to greenhouse gasses by driving themselves, their kids, and families across town to get here, and circling around looking for parking which is scarce.
On top of that, they aren’t here during the week. There is so much existing nonresidential space dedicated to them in parks both north and south of Lincoln and Sloat, they do not require this highway for recreation in their daily lives. It should fully open.
I am including one of many photos I have taken of bicyclists who drive to the GH to bicycle; they’re adding to greenhouse gasses by doing so to get to their car-free Great Highway, while the voluminous highway traffic continues to stop and go in the neighborhood endangering everyone with its noise and air pollution.
I am also attaching links to a few videos I was able to personally take of several different motorcycle and dirt-bike groups within feet of my home.
Please open these YouTube links to see for yourself how noisy and frightening this is for my neighbors and our families. One video was taken at 4:47 AM on a Saturday morning. How would you like that to go by your door at that hour?
25JUN2021
20MAR2021
27MAR2021
27NOV2020
Please consider the needs of your constituents to share the highway with vehicles over the desire for more unnecessary recreational space by those who are not living in harm’s way and who will suffer no consequences whether or not the highway reopens.
Respectfully submitted,
Judi Gorski
Resident/Voter/Taxpayer
Of course the SF Bicycle Coalition and Walk San Francisco support a "car-free" Great Highway.
Labels: Anti-Car, City Government, Environment, Great Highway, Neighborhoods, Parking, Punks on Bikes, Slow Streets, Traffic in the City
posted by Rob Anderson @ 2:36 PM
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