According to all documents on the project, the closure Bacon St was supposed to only be temporary, and once the project was finished, it was to be reopened.
Residents recently received a letter to invite them to a meeting to discuss security at the site, but at no time did SFWater mention Bacon Street closure as their preferred outcome.
The contact for the project is Suzanne Gautier <sgautier@sfwater.org> or 415-554-3204. I have already emailed her to ask that SFWater to send out a notice to the yahoo group about the July 28 meeting and to explain the reasons behind their desire to permanently close the street. (She said she would, but didn’t. I emailed her this week and asked again, but she did not post it. I told her I’d post it for her. She never replied).
Bacon is the only direct road connecting the University Mound with Bayshore Blvd. As we have already seen, closure cuts off residents' access to Bayshore and increases thru traffic on San Bruno, Woolsey, and Felton. It also creates a permanent impediment to access to McLaren park and requires people take longer, alternate routes to get there.
Bacon is the only direct road connecting the University Mound with Bayshore Blvd. As we have already seen, closure cuts off residents' access to Bayshore and increases thru traffic on San Bruno, Woolsey, and Felton. It also creates a permanent impediment to access to McLaren park and requires people take longer, alternate routes to get there.
I checked on the SFMTA site for Traffic Count Data... Some of the traffic studies aren’t all that recent, but they give us some numbers to work with, as they don’t seem to have changed much between 1996 and 2008:
6/12/1996: (1933 cars/day)
Bacon at San Bruno Eastbound 3263 cars in 4-days
Bacon at San Bruno Westbound 4468 cars in 4-days
12/10/2008: (2044 cars/day)
Bacon at San Bruno Eastbound 4429 cars in 4-days
Bacon at San Bruno Westbound 3745 cars in 4-days
4/16/2008: (498 cars/day)
Bacon at University Eastbound 927 cars in 4-days
Bacon at University Westbound 1065 cars in 4-days
11/7/2000: (1332 cars/day)
Felton at San Bruno Eastbound 1777 and Westbound 2220 cars in 3 days
So Felton and Woolsey will see an increase of 500 cars per day, as will other streets such as Holyoke and Gottingen as cars make their way back to Bacon, the only nearby street that is used to get across Bayshore.
Recently, Bayview residents were told (seemingly after it had already been decided) of a similar thoroughfare closure on Jerrold Ave through the SF Produce Market. Outreach had been done, but quietly, and because there were no complaints, the plan is moving ahead without hearing much from residents.
I suggest that if indeed sfwater wants to close this street, that a group of residents and business owners organize to come up with a set of reasons why they think it's a bad idea. Ask questions such as 'What environmental studies have been done or are required?' 'What traffic studies have been done?' Even if all the requirements have been met, sfwater isn't doing a good enough job informing people, from what I can tell, and all that does is make them look like they're being shady, whether this is their intention or not. However, putting up permanent white pillars makes it seem like they've made up their minds already.
On Tuesday, July 12 at 1:30PM there will also be a public hearing at City Hall (Room 400) to discuss proposed changes to the scope, schedule, and budget of the Water System Improvement Program (WSIP), of which the University Mound project is a part. The only mention of changes to the project are to address a delay in completion. There is NO mention of plans to permanently close the street on the SFWater site or on the SF Planning Department website. This heightens the importance of attending the meeting on July 28th at the Yellow House, but also means that SFWater is planning to “announce and defend” their one proposal – street closure – at this meeting without having looked at alternatives.
The bottom line is that we need people to attend the July 12 at meeting at City Hall AND the July 28 meeting at the Yellow House. There also needs to be coordination in our presentation so that we don’t all come across like raving lunatics (I’m sure everyone’s been to meetings where the ‘foamers’ come out and take up lots of time but get very little accomplished). We need to be polished and ready to defend OUR security and access to the city, have well thought out questions, knowing what answers that we want, but also prepared to counter the answers that we expect to get from them.
I’m happy to meet with others to try to coalesce around and couple of well thought out arguments against this closure and to bring data to the table that show how this will affect access. I’m out of commission from tonight until the 23rd (vacation and then planning for Wellness Day on the 23rd – please come!!), but am free to meet any evening after that and before the 28th.
The SFWater website has been scrubbed clean of all documents. Below is all I had saved re the project...
Project Factsheet, October 2009
Things to Know, April 2010
Final Construction Project Update, April 2011
Attachment 3 - Summary of Schedule Changes, June 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment
Although you can post anonymously, I encourage you to post as yourself or under a pseudonym in case other readers would like to respond to your comments. Thanks!