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Author Topic: Lombard Street, Hyde Street Pier, and Van Ness Avenue  (Read 2201 times)

Max Rockatansky

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Lombard Street, Hyde Street Pier, and Van Ness Avenue
« on: November 12, 2017, 10:58:03 PM »

Had enough time before sundown to check out Lombard Street and the Hyde Street Pier before sundown.  The Hyde Street Pier had a nice US 101 Redwood Highway shield posted on it.  Strange to think that US 101 and really even US 40 used the ferries so late into the 1930s, I'm looking forward to doing road blog research on this one:

https://flic.kr/s/aHsm7KU4ga

I also checked out Van Ness Avenue along US 101 up to the beginning of the freeway segment in the morning, I'll touch on the history with that alignment as well.
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Max Rockatansky

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Re: Lombard Street, Hyde Street Pier, and Van Ness Avenue
« Reply #1 on: November 19, 2017, 03:24:04 PM »

Finally got back to finishing those road blogs up, just finished the one on downtown San Francisco and the Hyde Street Pier:

http://surewhynotnow.blogspot.com/2017/11/november-bay-trip-part-6-downtown-san.html

If anyone has a map of showing US 101 and US 101W in downtown San Francisco prior to the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge it would be greatly appreciated.  Understandably I know the roads were maintained by the city but I can't find for the life of me anything that shows clearly the US 101 alignment prior to the Golden Gate Bridge.

http://surewhynotnow.blogspot.com/2017/11/november-bay-trip-part-6-downtown-san.html
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TheStranger

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Re: Lombard Street, Hyde Street Pier, and Van Ness Avenue
« Reply #2 on: November 20, 2017, 04:32:08 AM »

The public transit project for Van Ness is a bus rapid transit lane setup for the median to assist with the headways for the 47 and 49 MUNI lines:

https://www.sfmta.com/projects-planning/projects/van-ness-improvement-project

Until last month, the middle lanes were completely closed off with the middle and right lane on both directions of traffic being the through traffic routings.  I've noticed the lane shifts that have been occurring this month.

Much of the former Central Freeway alignment north of Market can be still seen in the form of several parking lots, an urban garden site at the old Fell Street exit (which is slated to become housing IIRC) and finally, the east frontage of Octavia Boulevard in Hayes Valley that has a beer garden and Smitten Ice Cream's first of several standalone locations.
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Chris Sampang

mrsman

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Re: Lombard Street, Hyde Street Pier, and Van Ness Avenue
« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2017, 08:56:31 AM »

While I don't have information on dates, or any real knowledge of whether these roads were actually signed as US 101, there definitely is a long history of using Mission corridor roads as the gateway toward the peninsula and San Jose. 

Historically, there were two main routings between SF and SJ for both cars and trains:  Mission routing and Bayshore routing.  The Mission routing is older, and it was an easier routing because Mission followed the valley of hills and took the path of least resistance.  The routing via Bayshore is more direct, and eventually became the main way of connecting the two cities.  Today's BART routing via Daly City to SFO and Millbrae largely follows the old SPRR routing.  The modern route of Caltrain follows the newer Bayshore routing, using tunnels to get through some of the biggest hills.

Mission Street, from Daly City, all the way to Downtown, was the main way from San Jose to SF since stagecoach days.  When there was a need to route traffic from SJ-SF-Marin (via the Hyde St ferry), northbound traffic left Mission by taking Valencia north, whereas downtown bound traffic continued on Mission.

As far as roads go, cahighways.org has the following information:

Quote

Here are some specifics on the routings:

Up to 1932, US 101 from San Jose to San Francisco was US 101W, following El Camino Real, Mission St., Valencia St, Market St. (where it met US 101E coming from Oakland, via a Ferry), Van Ness Av, Bay St., and Hyde St., to the Sausalito Ferry. In July 1932, the US 101W/US 101 E split occurred.

In 1933, US 101W changed at Daly City to the route of San Jose Ave., Alemany Blvd., Bayshore Blvd., Potrero Ave., 10th St., Fell St., Van Ness Ave., Bay St. and Hyde St. to the Sausalito Ferry.

In 1936, US 101W became US 101.

In 1938, the Bayshore Blvd from San Francisco to San Jose became US 101, and Alemany Bl - San Jose Ave - El Camino Real because US 101A. From Bayshore Blvd & Alemany, US 101 continued on Bayshore Blvd., Potrero Ave., 10th St., Fell St., Van Ness Ave., Lombard St., and Richardson Blvd. to the Golden Gate Bridge. There evidently was a lot of infighting as to whether the El Camino or Bayshore would be US 101; some of this is illustrated by the Trees for El Camino Project

In 1940, Alemany Blvd., San Jose Ave., and El Camino Real became US 101, while Bayshore Blvd. became Bypass US 101. The old US 101 and Bypass 101 rejoined in southern San Francisco. The route was LRN 68 for a short time.


EDITED TO ADD:

Now when the San Jose-Alemany route became US 101 in 1933, I would imagine that a lot of traffic would still take the old routing (more or less).  Instead of Mission-Valencia, I would imagine that a lot of traffic took the wider SanJose-Guerrero to connect to Market Street.  (Hence the name San Jose Ave, showing the preferred way to San Jose instead of Mission.)  There was probably no official signage of this routing in any capacity, as the main signage routed traffic along Alemany-Bayshore.   

Of course, historically, traffic from Mission to the Hyde Street Pier had to follow some connection to Market (via Valencia, Guerrero or even Dolores) as there was no way for the Mission traffic to go directly to Van Ness because Van Ness did not always extend south of Market. (South Van Ness is newer than most streets in the area, it cuts through the  grid and connects to the original routing of Howard Street.)

Van Ness historically, and in the present day, was one of the widest N/S streets in SF, so it has long been a natural routing to the Hyde Street Pier.  (Van Ness' width stopped the spread of the fires that burned most of the city following the earthquake of 1908.  After the earthquake, it became a major business district as the old part of the city was being rebuilt.
« Last Edit: December 03, 2017, 12:07:09 PM by mrsman »
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Max Rockatansky

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Re: Lombard Street, Hyde Street Pier, and Van Ness Avenue
« Reply #4 on: December 03, 2017, 10:31:01 AM »

The crappy thing is that really clear concrete information about the City of San Francisco and US 101 routings is that I've never seen a map of the city that map the alignment clear.   Essentially all the maps I've ever found show US 101 entering San Francisco and it just disappearing onto arterial streets from there.  All the roads in San Francisco were under control of the city until the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge were being built, hence why the 1935 Division of Highways Map really isn't much help.  I'd love to find some sort clearer maps possibly showing US 101 in San Francisco from the 1927-1935 era.  Then again finding anything really substance from that era in California in city level detail is difficult pretty much everywhere.
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mrsman

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Re: Lombard Street, Hyde Street Pier, and Van Ness Avenue
« Reply #5 on: December 03, 2017, 12:48:01 PM »

The crappy thing is that really clear concrete information about the City of San Francisco and US 101 routings is that I've never seen a map of the city that map the alignment clear.   Essentially all the maps I've ever found show US 101 entering San Francisco and it just disappearing onto arterial streets from there.  All the roads in San Francisco were under control of the city until the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge were being built, hence why the 1935 Division of Highways Map really isn't much help.  I'd love to find some sort clearer maps possibly showing US 101 in San Francisco from the 1927-1935 era.  Then again finding anything really substance from that era in California in city level detail is difficult pretty much everywhere.

This is very true.  Most state-level maps do a poor job of showing all the twists and turns that signed highways make when traversing a city, even in the inset maps.  Likewise, I have never been pleased when trying to follow routings of state or US highways in city streets.  Signage of turns tends to generally be quite poor.  I can't speak as to what existed back in 1932, but I can tell you from personal experience that signage in most cities could be a lot better.
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Max Rockatansky

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Re: Lombard Street, Hyde Street Pier, and Van Ness Avenue
« Reply #6 on: December 03, 2017, 05:41:55 PM »

The crappy thing is that really clear concrete information about the City of San Francisco and US 101 routings is that I've never seen a map of the city that map the alignment clear.   Essentially all the maps I've ever found show US 101 entering San Francisco and it just disappearing onto arterial streets from there.  All the roads in San Francisco were under control of the city until the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge were being built, hence why the 1935 Division of Highways Map really isn't much help.  I'd love to find some sort clearer maps possibly showing US 101 in San Francisco from the 1927-1935 era.  Then again finding anything really substance from that era in California in city level detail is difficult pretty much everywhere.

This is very true.  Most state-level maps do a poor job of showing all the twists and turns that signed highways make when traversing a city, even in the inset maps.  Likewise, I have never been pleased when trying to follow routings of state or US highways in city streets.  Signage of turns tends to generally be quite poor.  I can't speak as to what existed back in 1932, but I can tell you from personal experience that signage in most cities could be a lot better.

I've been doing a lot of research on early era US 99 in California.  Finding some of the early alignments is pretty difficult given how vague the maps provided by the Division of Highways are through cities in the era.  Generally you just see a shield on the US Route at both ends of a city but nothing in between.  I've found the 1935 Division of Highways Maps to be incredibly helpful due the detailed view showing what was state maintained versus county.  For Fresno and Bakersfield it worked out pretty well for the most part but San Fran has been the exception as we have previously stated.  I haven't really tried to track down anything in Los Angeles but for the most part all those US Routes seemed to be documented by others fairly well. 

For the most part I've found state route signage in the field to be pretty adequate on city streets nowadays aside from the Bay Area.  CA 130 comes to mind as a route that virtually doesn't exist within the city limits of San Jose.  County Route signage on the other hand has gone completely to hell with many recognized routes actually not being signed at all much less in urban areas.
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