Senator Scott Weiner Petitions Caltrans to remove the Central Freeway in SF

[thsftw]

I took a look at Google Maps to try and visualize any alternatives and there really aren't any? The ramps to 9th and 10th would have to stay, and the only other thing I could see is keeping a ramp to Division and having Division traffic turn onto Van Ness to replace the 101 highway thru traffic access. But that really doesn't even solve any problems or make any more land available?

[skluth]

I took a look at Google Maps to try and visualize any alternatives and there really aren't any? The ramps to 9th and 10th would have to stay, and the only other thing I could see is keeping a ramp to Division and having Division traffic turn onto Van Ness to replace the 101 highway thru traffic access. But that really doesn't even solve any problems or make any more land available?

I agree very little new land would be made available. But Division likely would be restyled as a boulevard like Octavia Blvd with two express lanes each way down the center and one-way feeder streets on each side for local traffic. This configuration would still get traffic from Bryant to Van Ness relatively quickly, especially if the lights on Division were synched.

I also agree the ramps to 9th/10th should stay but San Francisco is its own brand of weirdness/insanity (depending on your POV). My big worry would be outright reconfiguration of both interchanges and the 9th/10th ramps only going to the Bryant/Division intersection since Crossbay traffic can use the ramps to 8th. I realized this would be the cheapest option while writing this response and the more I think about it the more I can see this being considered the preferred alternative for Weiner and his constituents.

[kkt]

San Francisco's minimum wage for both tipped and non-tipped employees went up to $16.99 per hour in July. While that sounds like a lot for a minimum wage, a person would have a hard time trying to live on that anywhere in the Bay Area.

That's lower than I expected. For comparison, Washington's statewide minimum is set to hit $15.74 in January (up from $14.49) and Seattle's city minimum is $18.69 for employers who don't pay medical benefits.

I'm sure the weird change at the end is due to the output of some formula, but couldn't they round up to the next nickel?

Yes it is adjusted annually for price index.  I'm not sure why it would be important to make special rounding rules to the nickel instead of to the penny.  Are you calculating your paycheck in your head?

[bing101]

Okay, I'll bite a bit more here. I would venture a guess that I am the forum member that lives closest to the Central Freeway. The building I live in abuts it. I've lived here for 8+ years. Obviously I moved here knowing it's there, so I'm not going to insist on its removal, but...the removal would probably a net benefit for me.

My local lens is: the Central Freeway does not carry much *thru traffic* - it's mostly traffic bound to and from parts of SF north and especially west. Real thru traffic is on CA-1 or on I-580 over the Richmond Bridge. The other freeway portion that Weiner mentions, the Bayshore Viaduct section, *does* carry a ton of thru traffic that goes from the East Bay to the Peninsula via SF, and there would be a huge impact if it were impacted as well.

Removing the Central Freeway has some benefits, but they are probably small. The biggest benefit is likely to be saving on long-term maintenance costs. There is not a lot of land to reclaim under there (as skluth noted), as the street below is a major surface street. BTW, this doesn't really have anything to do with forcing everyone into bike lanes. The surface street already has protected bike lanes east of Foslom St, and they are in the works west of there as well. You don't need to take down the freeway for people to use those.

The biggest benefit to me, personally? The area down under the freeway tends to be dark, dingy, gross, most people don't wanna be down there so you have a higher concentration of more unsavory activity. And this is worse than other freeways in the city as it is a long, continuous stretch, as opposed to occasional bridges mid-block. The bridge supports also make sightlines at basically every intersection pretty bad (the stretch is on the city's "high injury network"), and the transitions from freeway speeds to surface streets results in drivers being more aggressive than elsewhere in the city other than perhaps that Bay Bridge approaches. The sidewalks are narrow. Removing the freeway _would_ fix all of these problems - and I don't think the drawbacks are that high given that most traffic is relatively local and ends up queued up at a stoplight anyways.

Re: Vacancy tax, lots of speculation, but the City has a commercial property vacancy tax that went into effect this year, and just voted a limited residential property vacancy tax that goes into effect in 2024. So, I suppose we will find out how that works in practice.

Happen to agree with that too! This is given that the city is also trying to figure out which new industries need to be there in response to some of the VC's and Tech Jobs moving to Austin, TX in the past two years. However that is hype for now what the reality would be is yet to be seen here. Yes this is where I was born but at the same time if I stayed there who knows where I would be today.

[bing101]

The Northeast doesn't have this problem as much. If you look at quality of life rankings, California ranks below most solid blue states (New Mexico is the major exception here and is arguably not solid blue), although still in the top half overall. I think some of it is that you can live on less if you don't drive, and public transit is better in the Northeast due to being less spread out. California's government has also made some questionable decisions (e.g. Proposition 65 may cause cancer, repeatedly changing COVID guidelines in mid-2020, the gig economy law intended for rideshare drivers unintentionally affecting musicians negatively, decriminalization of theft under $950), blunders that the Northeast would not make. In addition, most homeless have shelter in the Northeast while it's comparatively less in California.

I don't know how Oregon, Washington, or Illinois compare. Minnesota does quite well.

Now if we could get New Hampshire's minimum wage above $7.25/hr...

Isn't New England States usually have a better quality of life among the blue states. I heard of Massachusetts and Vermont brought up at one point.

[Scott5114]

San Francisco's minimum wage for both tipped and non-tipped employees went up to $16.99 per hour in July. While that sounds like a lot for a minimum wage, a person would have a hard time trying to live on that anywhere in the Bay Area.

That's lower than I expected. For comparison, Washington's statewide minimum is set to hit $15.74 in January (up from $14.49) and Seattle's city minimum is $18.69 for employers who don't pay medical benefits.

I'm sure the weird change at the end is due to the output of some formula, but couldn't they round up to the next nickel?

Yes it is adjusted annually for price index.  I'm not sure why it would be important to make special rounding rules to the nickel instead of to the penny.  Are you calculating your paycheck in your head?

It just stuck out to me, considering that federal minimum wage (and thus Oklahoma minimum wage) has been rounded off as long as I've been in the workforce. ($5.15 → $6.00 → $7.25)

[TheStranger]

I took a look at Google Maps to try and visualize any alternatives and there really aren't any? The ramps to 9th and 10th would have to stay, and the only other thing I could see is keeping a ramp to Division and having Division traffic turn onto Van Ness to replace the 101 highway thru traffic access. But that really doesn't even solve any problems or make any more land available?

I agree very little new land would be made available. But Division likely would be restyled as a boulevard like Octavia Blvd with two express lanes each way down the center and one-way feeder streets on each side for local traffic. This configuration would still get traffic from Bryant to Van Ness relatively quickly, especially if the lights on Division were synched.

IIRC Octavia has a light sync setup that was designed to keep cars from rolling super-fast down the road, in concert with the somewhat steep incline from Market to Haight (which itself hasn't had that much of an effect).

When Mayor Lee proposed the removal of 280 in Dogpatch, local residents explicitly cited Octavia as a reason they did not want his plans implemented and instead specifically wanted the freeway retained.

I have read somewhere on this forum years ago that when the Central Freeway used to run all the way to Fell (and to Turk), the light timings for Fell/Oak facilitated 40 MPH continuous driving from the freeway towards Haight-Ashbury/Golden Gate Park; from experience I know Franklin Street (parallel alternate northbound to US 101 along Van Ness) has decent light syncing for about 25-30 MPH for through traffic, and pre-pandemic Great Highway was synced to about 35 MPH.  Current Great Highway light sync speed is closer to 29 MPH, but not quite sure how fast.

[SectorZ]

The Northeast doesn't have this problem as much. If you look at quality of life rankings, California ranks below most solid blue states (New Mexico is the major exception here and is arguably not solid blue), although still in the top half overall. I think some of it is that you can live on less if you don't drive, and public transit is better in the Northeast due to being less spread out. California's government has also made some questionable decisions (e.g. Proposition 65 may cause cancer, repeatedly changing COVID guidelines in mid-2020, the gig economy law intended for rideshare drivers unintentionally affecting musicians negatively, decriminalization of theft under $950), blunders that the Northeast would not make. In addition, most homeless have shelter in the Northeast while it's comparatively less in California.

I don't know how Oregon, Washington, or Illinois compare. Minnesota does quite well.

Now if we could get New Hampshire's minimum wage above $7.25/hr...

Go around anywhere in NH, and a Dunkin' Donuts is hiring at $12-$15/hr, while in Massachusetts they're $15-$16/hr, with Mass minimum wage moving to $15/hr on 1/1. I feel few people in NH work for minimum wage.