Voters to Decide Parking Garage Traffic Quandary

By George McConnell

A proposed solution to the debate over entrance and exit lanes for a new underground parking garage at the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park will be decided by voters this November.

To solve the problem of how to best comply with the traffic requirements mandated by Proposition J, the 1998 Golden Gate Park Revitalization Act, SF Supervisor Ross Mirkirimi has proposed two amendments to the Park Code and the proposition's Administrative Code. The SF Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to put the items on the ballot.

"Proposition J included certain traffic restrictions and requirements, but the wording of the law was considered ambiguous, and there have been differing interpretations," said Chris Duderstadt of the Alliance for Golden Gate Park, one of the groups monitoring the park's renovation projects.

A judicial review of the issue on June 16 determined that all entrances and exits to the garage must begin at a point outside the park or be served by a dedicated access lane beginning at a point located outside the park.

In response to this decision, the Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority and the SF Recreation and Park Commission approved a plan calling for the creation of two dedicated access lanes beginning at the Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way entrance to the park and running along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to the garage's entrance at Concourse Drive, according to Duderstadt.

"Unfortunately, this would necessitate having to widen Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to four lanes, and everybody agreed that would be unacceptable," Duderstadt said.

Because the lanes could negatively impact general traffic circulation and public use of the streets, voters will be asked to approve the proposed amendments, which will be listed as Proposition G on the ballot. The ballot measure would request special permission to allow the two-lane entrance to the park at Ninth Avenue to also be the entrance to the underground garage.

Proposition J prohibits any entrance-exit inside the park, so the Golden Gate Concourse Authority's original plan was challenged in court. Although the court ruled last year that a second entrance to the garage should be built, it concluded that it should be located outside the park.

"It's entirely possible that this (second entrance in the park) won't be built," said Katherine Roberts of Trees Not Cars, one of the groups involved in the litigation.

Construction of the garage, supported by the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the California Academy of Sciences as an effort to increase patronage, began 15 months ago. There will be two garage "pods" with an underground connecting roadway. Each section will accommodate 400 cars on two levels and parking will be fee-based.

The de Young Museum is scheduled to open its new facilities Oct. 15, and the north section of the garage will open in early October. The south garage will open six to eight weeks later, according to Ron Miguel, a member of Concourse Authority board.

The amendments suggested by Mirkirimi for the November ballot will add a section to the Park Code to read that designated portions of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive shall not provide for more than one dedicated lane in each direction for vehicle traffic, and the Administrative Code to read that provided the facility has at least one dedicated entrance-exit located outside the park, it may have one entrance-exit located inside the park without dedicated lanes.

As the north entrance on Fulton Street is a dedicated entrance-exit located outside the park, the amendments negate the requirement for dedicated lanes beginning at Ninth and Lincoln and running along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

"As written, we have nothing against it, but they could at a later time come back and add the dedicated lanes," Duderstadt said.

"In all probability it won't happen, but I am not an expert on that," Miguel said.

"When this is completed, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive is going to be a nightmare," Roberts said. "The park was not designed to accommodate all these cars. We are opposing the entire initiative. Proposition J mandated there be no entrance-exits inside the park. They should adhere to the original wording of Proposition J."

For more information about the underground garage project, visit the Web site at www.goldengateparkconcourse.org.