Supervisor Jake McGoldrick: The Rarest Treasure: GG Park

"And then to the rarest treasure, Golden Gate Park on a car-free Sunday morning, the air wet and clean, the meadows green with the promise of spring. Not a single automobile: The silence is deafening, you can actually hear the branches dripping moisture, squirrels scrambling through the underbrush - and the birds! Hundreds of red-breasted robins bobbing across the lawns, now that there are no cars to frighten them. On Stanyan, the families are renting bikes and heading into the winding trails. Slowly it dawns on them that they can use the main drive and the roads."
- Herb Caen San Francisco Chronicle, 1973

There are few things more enchanting than the scene within Golden Gate Park on a car-free Sunday. Where else can you watch parents proudly guiding their children on a first bicycle ride? Skaters - ages 17 to 70 - bobbing and weaving to disco beats? A group of kids playing a game of kickball without worrying about what happens if the ball rolls into the street?

Because there are so few comparable places for these experiences in San Francisco and because these are the activities we want to encourage in our city's most popular park, it seems only right that we should expand the opportunities for people to play and recreate safely in Golden Gate Park.

This is the intent of the Healthy Saturdays in Golden Gate Park legislation, which I sponsored with the support of six of my colleagues on the Board of Supervisors. The legislation, to implement a six-month trial of car-free space on JFK Dr. on Saturdays just as it has been on Sundays for the past 39 years, won unanimous support from the board's Land Use Committee in mid-April and was approved by the full Board of Supervisors April 25.

I feel confident that Healthy Saturdays will continue to win support because San Franciscans understand that we must do more to encourage regular physical activity, especially among children, to improve health and well-being. We understand that there are few places in our City that offers safe - and free - opportunities for this recreation.

The case for Healthy Saturdays has grown even stronger in the past few months as we have worked closely with the disabled community to ensure access to all parts of the park and cultural institutions for all users. We have been working with the Mayor's Office on Disabilities to add new parking spaces for people with disabilities, as well as new drop-off points.

In addition, even with the partial closure to cars on JFK Dr., anyone can drive to the front door of the de Young museum (and the Academy of Sciences when it reopens) to drop off passengers on any day of the week. Healthy Saturdays would not change this. All surface roads from the south side of the park (such as Martin Luther King Jr. Dr.) and the Concourse roads themselves are open to anyone driving. And, from both the north and south sides of the park, the 800-car underground garage is fully accessible by car for parking or for a 15-minute drop-off period.

We have also learned that the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum should have good reason to support the Healthy Saturdays proposal and work for its success. Official figures show that the de Young's attendance since reopening last Fall actually increases on Sundays, during the car-free space on JFK Drive. The average attendance on Saturdays at the de Young is 6,334 people, while the average Sunday attendance is 6,416 people. This directly contradicts the de Young leadership's prior claims that the popular car-free space on Sundays lessens their attendance below Saturday levels.

In the end, Healthy Saturdays has the potential to be a win-win situation for the de Young and other cultural institutions and for all the users who enjoy the car-free space in the park, just as Sundays have been for the past 39 years. I want to underscore that this legislation calls for a six-month trial, from May to November, which will allow for further community input and analysis before any decision is made on a longer-term plan.

I look forward to community members' and others stakeholders' input. And, I look forward to the enjoyment of thousands more people each week as they experience another day of "the rarest treasure, Golden Gate Park."

Jake McGoldrick is a San Francisco supervisor representing District 1.