Freeway removal revives sections of San Francisco

New Urban News Article with images, 9/1/2005

San Francisco’s newest multiway boulevard will be completed by mid-September, further aiding the revival of what had been a bedraggled portion of the Hayes Valley neighborhood southwest of downtown. The four-block thoroughfare, known as Octavia Boulevard, replaces a part of the Central Freeway that was damaged by the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. Allan B. Jacobs and Elizabeth Macdonald, two of the co-authors of The Boulevard Book (see Sept. 2002 New Urban News), designed the new roadway with the staff of the city’s Public Works Department.

The boulevard carries four lanes of through vehicles in its center, where a landscaped median separates the opposing directions of traffic. Two other landscaped medians, each lined with traditional-style streetlights, separate the center lanes from other pavement designated for slower-moving local traffic and curbside parking.

Robin Levitt, a local architect who supported the boulevard during contentious citywide referendums, says the medians, planted with allées of trees and furnished in some areas with benches, will establish a refreshing atmosphere in what was once a place of traffic exhaust and noise. The act of getting rid of the double-decker freeway’s damaged upper level — it was torn down in 1990 — helped bring “a major transformation” to an area previously troubled by muggings and prostitution, Levitt says. Investment increased, especially in housing.