San Francisco’s MTA boss Jeff Tumlin is one of a new breed of planner trying to kick cars out of the city. That’s good for business, good for people, and amazing for the planet.
Adam Rogers
04.01.2020 06:00 AMFor 30 years, a 40-foot-high section of US Route 101 wove like a blackberry vine through a low, old neighborhood of Edwardian and Georgian buildings in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley. Then, in 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake, magnitude 6.9, fractured the elevated roadway. Some people wanted to repair it, but the city decided to tear it down—a rare unbuilding in a nation connected by highways.
Today it’s hard to imagine that anyone defended the spur. The highway formed a wall between neighborhoods, and the right-of-way beneath it was a dark, unloved space. With the freeway pruned away, the city styled the newly revealed surface street—Octavia—after a grand Parisian boulevard, with an inner couple of lanes separated from parallel side streets by tree-lined islands. Octavia now terminates in a long, grassy park with a geodesic children’s play structure at one end. Nearby are pricey shops and chic cafés.
Build Cities for Bikes, Buses, and Feet—Not Cars | WIRED
San Francisco’s MTA boss Jeff Tumlin is one of a new breed of planner trying to kick cars out of the city. That’s good for business, good for people, and amazing for the planet. Adam Rogers 04.01.2020 06:00 AM For 30 years, a 40-foot-high section of US Route 101 wove like a blackberry vine through… [Read More]
