Supervisors buckle up to drive over 'Sunday Streets'

Credit: Jamie Whitaker

San Francisco Supervisors Peskin and Alioto-Pier may give preference to vehicle drivers who cannot find Van Ness Avenue over the broader benefits to public health, to the environment, to expanding open recreational space, and to community building activities scheduled for two 4-hour Sunday morning periods later this summer. 

Sunday Streets would close 4.6 miles of roadway and include some existing sections of pedestrian promenades at a time when traffic is minimal and the number of residents able to participate in healthy activities and community-building are maximized. The two events are currently scheduled for Sundays August 31st and September 14th from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m., but proposed legislation may hit-and-run the plan into the ground.

As noted in an article in today’s edition of San Francisco’s The Examiner newspaper, Supervisors Peskin and Alioto-Pier co-sponsored legislation at Wednesday’s special Board meeting that, if approved, would require approval by the Board of Supervisors for the Sunday Streets event to take place. This is another case of members of the Board of Supervisors ignoring the benefits to the most number of San Franciscans in favor of pacifying a vocal minority.

Failing to recognize that San Francisco is the most ‘walkable’ city in the United States of America and that drivers have more than one roadway available to them than just The Embarcadero that leads to the northern waterfront, Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39 businesses claim the four-hour events scheduled for Sunday mornings will disrupt business on their busiest days of the year.  The Mayor scaled back the event from three to two Sundays in an attempt to reach a compromise with the business representatives of Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39.  The whining from the northern waterfront continued and the Mayor’s office offered free public transit on the T-Third and F-Market lines during the event, offered points for traffic to cross the route, and terminated the Embarcadero portion of the route at Washington Street, about 1 mile south of Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39.  These further compromises have not appeased the business representatives who seem unwilling to shutup until the events are postponed to different dates.

Sunday Streets is the next logical step following San Francisco’s mandated paid sick leave and Healthy San Francisco Health Access Program that aims to provide health insurance to all San Franciscans.  Sunday Streets provides an impetus for people to become physically active and to improve their health to mitigate the needs to call in sick to work or to visit their doctors. The opportunity for neighbors to meet one another and to visit other neighborhoods also provides a great benefit to San Francisco. When the big earthquake strikes San Francisco, neighbors are going to have to take care of each other for the first day or two because our first responders will be overwhelmed and unable to help everybody all at once.  Mothers from Chinatown to South Beach to Bayview will appreciate the decrease in pollution for those 4 hours to allow them to take their children out for a stroll or a bike ride and breathe slightly cleaner air without the chainsaw buzz of modified tailpipe motorcycles driving northbound filling their ears.

The community organizations that support Sunday Streets include the Bayview Merchants Association, California Pacific Medical Center, YMCA of San Francisco, Neighborhood Parks Council, Kaiser Permanente, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, Walk San Francisco, and many others.  These organizations recognize the benefits of Sunday Streets to all San Franciscans are worth shutting down 4.6 miles of roadway to cars on Sunday mornings for four hours. 

While I do not know the reaction of other neighborhood groups, I did attend Monday’s South Beach/Rincon/Mission Bay Neighborhood Association meeting, a group that represents a good portion of the neighborhoods adjacent to the planned route, and I got a sense that the 40+ attendees approved and were anxious to see Sunday Streets succeed.  There are businesses south of Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39 along the waterfront, possibly more will move in to the area if developers are allowed to build office towers on Piers 30 and 32 in order to finance a new cruise ship terminal at Pier 27 in the future, and those southern waterfront businesses would likely benefit greatly from the increased foot and bicycle traffic provided by the Sunday Streets events.

We’ll have to wait until Monday’s 10:00 a.m. Government Audit and Oversight Committee hearing on the proposed legislation to learn if a small group of businesses are given a green light by Supervisors to run over this healthy, community-building event that benefits thousands of San Franciscans . It is my personal hope that the Supervisors stay consistent in supporting public health, the environment, transit first, and the temporary expansion (for four hours) of public recreational space to allow neighbors to meet and interact with neighbors. That's what reasonable politicians would support - the most benefit for the most number of constituents.