“City planners are proposing to redesign a below-ground-level stretch of Geary Boulevard to create more open space and pedestrian-friendly links between Japantown and the Fillmore and Western Addition areas. Options [to be discussed at a public workshop on Feb. 12 along with a related Geary Boulevard transit project (BRT)] will include new traffic signals and pedestrian crossings, integration of the boulevard with new open spaces planned in Japantown, and raising the street to ground-level…”
∙ City may topple Japantown’s ‘Berlin Wall’ [Examiner]
∙ The 4 Design Concepts For The Future Of San Francisco’s Japantown [SocketSite]
What an awesome idea! Once the city gets ahold of it, it could become like San Francisco’s version of the “Big Dig” — a huge taxpayer boondoggle to funnel money into the hands of the local construction trades.
Maybe they could convert 19th Ave. into a giant underground expressway leading to the GG bridge and then put a park where the road is now.
Jimmy – I don’t think that they are necessarily thinking of sinking Geary further. The way I read it it appears as if they want to fill in the viaduct under Steiner and bring Geary back up to grade. Instead of a big dig, this could be a “small fill”.
That could slow traffic in Geary somewhat due to a new stoplight at Steiner. These days there are new technologies using flexible synchronized stoplight timing to optimize traffic flow. Could be a win-win.
Today this location is a mess for north-south pedestrian traffic. You can see two pedestrian over crossings one block east and west of Steiner. Ped over crossings are usually a band-aid to cover up a problem created by allocating too much land to auto traffic.
I certainly hope that whatever is done makes accommodates a future Muni rail link to the western neighborhoods. It would be a shame if the new configuration precludes transit since that’s the only practical way to increase volume on space constrained streets like this.
One of the plans on the Geary BRT is to bring only the center two lanes up to grade. These would be for the 38R bus line. The other four traffic lanes would be left below grade. At the intersection of Fillmore and Geary there would be a large bus station for interchange between the 22 and the 38/38L/38R
while we’re big digging (it’s only a matter of time).
1. Submerge SOMA-slashing double decker 80 and that flying buttress to nowhere -(280)– on top of submerged 80 create an emerald parkway from 5th to hospital curve –w/upzoning — public/private partnership the way to go. Private dollars.
2. Back to J-Town. Address the hulking Safeway parking lot while we’re looking @ the connection bwtn North and South. Safeway complex should be linked to J-Town redev — now it’s weird entrances/exists, wasteful critically located lot, bad landscaping, basically at your own risk and uncomfortable for pedestrians . It’s plainly bad planning – from every POW. Cut off from everything around it.
IMO.
Perhaps moving the public housing out of Western addition would be a start.
“2. Back to J-Town. Address the hulking Safeway parking lot while we’re looking @ the connection bwtn North and South. Safeway complex should be linked to J-Town redev — now it’s weird entrances/exists, wasteful critically located lot, bad landscaping, basically at your own risk and uncomfortable for pedestrians . It’s plainly bad planning – from every POW. Cut off from everything around it.”
I completly agree. Safeway can do much better with their store (aka “ghetto safeway”) then what is there now. Beautify the store and parking lot and make it more accessible to pedestrian traffic.
Just what J-Town needs, easier access from the gang bangers on the other side of Geary.
If there is a J-Town merchant’s association, they’ll be out in force tonight to stop this. Or to convince the city to fill the below grade part of Geary with water to make it harder for the gangs to spill over to the other side.
A few blocks up near Divisadero, where there is no natural barrier, the gang problems spilling from Western Addition into Lower Pac Heights and Pac Heights are getting to be pretty bad. And the neighborhood around Sacramento and Divisadero is just endlessly tagged, to the point that people are just giving up trying to control it.
I know, Western Addition has a big gang problem. The City needs to hire more cops to have a bigger presence in the area. They need a new zero tolerance attitude about this ’cause these thugs do not fear SF police at all, at all. They know the average person is going to look the other way if they commit a crime ’cause they fear that these young thugs are probably carrying a gun beneath their big black sweatshirts.
But, to get back on subject, we shouldn’t let these thugs hold back the re-redevelopment of this area.
Tipster – Any gangsta determined to commit crime probably is also determined enough to go around the present Geary barriers.
But this sort of argument almost always comes up at public meetings on barrier removals. “Those thugs from ABC are going to come over to XYZ and cause havoc !”
What’s really amusing is when a public discussion where each neighborhood claims that the other is going to cross over and mess stuff up.
Xenophobia lurks in the heart of NIMBYs.
Look the other way? It’s the California mantra.
Live and let live San Francisco. Tagging? murder, gross public behavior? C’mon get into the groove – be PC (cringe), join our leaders and look the other way.
That’s why much of our city looks the skanky way it does. And only SF utterly successful marketing machine can keep the tourists coming back.
Hey MarkSFCA,
I overheard that at the xyz bar myself! I just don’t know what those ABC thugs have against the W hotel.
funny, but that was The Milkshake of Despair’s comment.
How long did it take to build the current bus stop complex over Geary? I seem to remember it being under continuous construction for nearly 2-year not to long ago and all we really got was the word “Blue” in plexiglas.
I think the problem is less about better access between the north side and south side and more about having a good reason to cross the street. There’s just not that much that connects the north and south sides of the street.
Bulldoze the public housing in the Western Addition and all the problems will be solved.
Not P.C. but very true.
M.R.