Paul Kozakiewicz: Another Fight Over Fate of Central Fwy.

In a surprise move, SF Supervisor Bevan Dufty introduced a resolution that would scrap what remains of the Central Freeway, a vital transportation link for westside residents.

For the last four years, city officials, in concert with Caltrans, have designed and started rebuilding the freeway back to Market Street, where it would connect to an Octavia Boulevard expressway linked to Fell and Oak streets. City voters approved the $90 million plan in 1999 (Proposition I). It is expected to be completed next year.

But Dufty tried to ramrod a resolution through the SF Transportation Authority that would have asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to scrap the project and keep the money. The Transportation Authority is comprised of all of the members of the SF Board of Supervisors.

Fortunately, SF Supervisor Jake McGoldrick succeeded in getting the resolution shipped to the supervisor's Land Use Committee for a March hearing so westside residents could be heard.

According to a Strategic Analysis Report (SAR) prepared by Transportation Authority staff and adopted by the Transportation Authority in February, if the freeway were scrapped now the effects would include:

· a loss of $90 million in funding already secured to rebuild the freeway;

· an additional six years to complete a new project;

· a cost of $173 million to $238 million to revisit the Central Freeway project and rebuild it from scratch;

· the need for a 10-lane surface road to handle the 4,000 vehicles per hour in each direction traffic load;

· an increase in commuter travel times, not just to the westside, but also to the Castro District and Upper Market neighborhoods;

· delays for all vehicle traffic trying to cross Division, 13th and Octavia streets because traffic signals would have to remain green for long periods of time to keep traffic moving on and off the shortened Central Freeway.

Other obvious effects of scrapping the Central Freeway include choking surface streets with vehicles, particularly on South Van Ness Avenue and Ninth and 10th streets in the South of Market area, and significantly increasing the amount of air pollution residents would have to ingest. The area was a traffic nightmare when the freeway was temporarily closed in the mid-'90s.

As well, with only a nub of freeway coming down at Bryant Street, traffic would back up onto Highway 101, causing a dangerous situation on that important thoroughfare.

And there are economic consequences.

Merchants from Japantown and Hayes Valley told supervisors in February that they were already hurting financially and that scrapping the plan to bring the freeway down at Market Street would negatively affect their ability to make a living.

But, despite the numerous negative impacts associated with the plan, the authors of the SAR report tried to paint the situation in a rosy light to augment Dufty's legislative-push through the supervisors.

In 1997, city voters said we should rebuild the Central Freeway back to Fell and Oak streets, the terminus for the freeway prior to the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. Two ballot battles later, the Octavia Boulevard plan was settled on as the best option for Caltrans to move eastbound and westbound traffic quickly, safely and efficiently.

When city voters OK'd the Octavia Boulevard plan in 1999, many of the local people who worked to rebuild the Central Freeway decided not to go back to the ballot to try to rebuild the freeway back to Fell and Oak streets. Instead, we decided to try to make the plan work as best as possible to facilitate the needs of people traveling east and west.

The Board of Supervisors should vote to proceed with that plan and not let Dufty's bad faith effort to undermine the Central Freeway project succeed. Waiting another six years and throwing away $90 million is not a prudent course of action, but stranger things have occurred at City Hall.

It is important that residents living in the westside voice their opinions at the Land Use Committee hearing, which will be held at City Hall on Monday, March 15, at 1 p.m.

Otherwise, an already bad situation will get progressively worse for San Franciscans trying to make a simple trip across town.

Paul Kozakiewicz is editor of the Richmond Review and Sunset Beacon newspapers.