A controversy in San Francisco is brewing that sounds very familiar. Right now, the city closes part of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park to cars each Sunday. It appears that bicycle and pedestrian advocates have been successful in getting the closures extended to Saturday.
San Francisco voters rejected two ballot measures in 2000 that would have closed JFK to traffic on Saturdays. At the time, one of the main objections had been that an 800-space parking garage had not yet been built below the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park. Shahum said since that parking garage at the De Young is now functioning there should be enough parking in the area. Others said there are too few places to walk and bike in The City.
Not everyone is pleased. One of The Examiner's San Francisco columnists feels the advocates are trying to short circuit the democratic process.
voters in 2000 overwhelmingly rejected Saturday road closures not once, but twice. Yet the bikers and skaters who feel entitled to their favorite section of the park have once again gotten two supervisors, Jake McGoldrick and Ross Mirkarimi, to override history and political will in the most recent push to block cars from the park.
This is similar to, but not identical to, the controversy in DC over closing Beach Drive in Rock Creek Park. One difference is that DC citizens never got a chance to vote on extending the hours during which Beach Drive is closed. I don't know how that vote would turn out, but it's clear that Maryland's Congressional delegation has worked hard to keep it from closing.
Still, there seems to be a movement - nation wide and even world wide - toward closing more roads to car traffic to make them available for recreational uses. I found out about this article on Rebuilding Place (Peddling car free, bike-friendly days for Baltimore) about how American cities are starting to notice the Ciclovias of Bogota, Columbia.
Bogota has continued on the environmentally progressive course he and Peñalosa set. Indeed, the long-range goal - currently the subject of legal wrangling - is to ban virtually all cars within city limits during morning and evening peak hours by 2015.
No American city (or mayor) is ready to take that radical a quality-of-life step, but officials in Boston, Cleveland and Philadelphia reportedly are contemplating Ciclovia-inspired weekend road closures. Chicago, however, may be ready to roll this fall. Mayor Richard M. Daley has signed off on a "Sunday Parkways" program that would block off three to eight miles of city streets from noon to 5 p.m.
Cantori would love to have Baltimore be the second. He thinks Druid Hill Park might make a good focal point for a mini-Ciclovia.
If successful, it would be easy to expand the route to the Inner Harbor, then to east and west Baltimore and even Towson: "I can see people coming from Washington and Philadelphia to ride in Baltimore
It would be interesting to see how shutting down cars for a day, or even a few hours, might effect the environment. Remember after 9/11, when air travel was shut down, researchers discovered that the contrails created by airplanes decreased the variations in high and low temperatures by 1.1 degrees Celsius. I wonder if such a change would be visible in Bogota.
Comments