Sunset Merchants Oppose Plan for Park Garage Entrance on 9th Ave.

By Peter Sciacca

Fearing increased gridlock in an area that already has heavy traffic, the Inner Sunset Merchants Association is lobbying to prevent the creation of a Lincoln Way entrance for an underground parking garage at Golden Gate Park's Music Concourse.

Craig Dawson, vice president of communications for the association, called the proposal for the intersection of Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way "ludicrous."

"Peak and weekend traffic in the area is already at a gridlock," he said. "You have to look at everything in a broader context when dealing with this much traffic."

Dawson's group has attempted to draw up some alternative plans to present to the Concourse Authority, which is overseeing the project.

"We never presented those ideas because they were also flawed," he said. "The area simply can't handle the added traffic."

On Jan. 3 the Alliance for Golden Gate Park filed a lawsuit to stop the garage entrance at Ninth Avenue, saying the plan violates Proposition J, the measure approved by city voters that OK'd construction of the garage.

Dawson charges that the current plan is drastically different from what the Concourse Authority presented to his group several years ago.

"They met with us during the Proposition J (underground garage plan) campaign and advertised it (the Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way entrance) as an emergency exit," he said. "They said it would not be used as an entrance or on a regular basis."

Dawson was stunned when the Concourse Authority released an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) in October that listed the intersection as a full-time entrance.

"They said people coming from the southern part of the city to the garage would be routed along Ninth Avenue," he said. "It is projected that 80 percent of the traffic for the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum will be created by visitors coming from outside the City."

A judge rejected a plan to locate the entrance inside Golden Gate Park and urged the Concourse Authority to recommend some other options for a southern entrance.

"There is no way of knowing if they even attempted to come up with alternative plans because no other ideas have been made available to the public," Dawson said. "The only intersection they did a study on was Ninth and Lincoln.

"We asked them to look at other intersections along Lincoln Way but they declined. I've met with members of the Concourse Authority several times, but it seems our concerns don't matter."

Dawson also claimed the authority's "level of service" traffic study was misleading.

"When it was looked at by experts from UCSF they discovered that the data was inaccurate," he said. "They basically presented the intersection as being less congested than it actually is."

Along with traffic problems, Dawson also questions why the City is spending money to create a southern entrance for the parking garage.

"This is a clear waste of our resources when Rec. and Park is actually cutting back on public programs and the City is facing shortfalls," he said.

"There is also a set of street lights that have just been installed along Martin Luther King Drive in Golden Gate Park. All or most of these lights will have to be removed to accommodate the southern parking garage entrance. The money and effort spent to put these up would be in vain,"  he said.

On recent weekends, members of the Inner Sunset Merchants Association have been standing at the intersection of Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way holding up signs to protest the plan and handing out fliers to inform Sunset residents.

The association has also enlisted the support of supervisors who are concerned about the potential impact of the garage entrance on the Inner Sunset. Dawson declined to reveal which supervisors might be backing his group.

"They will be at a press conference we have planned for early this year at City Hall to draw attention to the Concourse Authority's plan," he said.