Twin Peaks compromise goes off track
Leave it to City Hall to craft a compromise that makes little sense and makes nobody happy.
You’ll recall that the city closed Twin Peaks Boulevard to cars at the start of the coronavirus pandemic to prevent crowding — and that it quickly went from a glasscovered car breakin hot spot to a paradise in the clouds for bicyclists, pedestrians, skateboarders and little kids on scooters.
It was a highlight of a very bleak year, and many families including mine hope it’s permanent.
But down the hill, life hasn’t been so idyllic. Neighbors on the Burnett Avenue side of the mountain complained that all the property crime, shattered glass, trash and nighttime parties just slid down the slope into their neighborhood.
So Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, Park Station police Capt. Christopher Pedrini and representatives from the Recreation and Park Department and San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency met via Zoom a couple of weeks ago to craft a compromise.
Without notifying the Burnett Avenue neighbors or anybody else, the city last week began opening the big yellow gate on Portola Avenue — the other side of the mountain from the complaining neighbors — to cars from 6 p.m. to midnight as the solution.
The idea is to move the shenanigans that were plaguing the Burnett neighbors around to Portola Avenue and up to the overlook at the top of the mountain where no residents can be bothered. Then, police and park rangers will clear them out at midnight — yes, asking people who’ve been partying to get back in their cars and drive down a dark, steep mountain. What could go wrong? The unpopular compromise also eliminates families’ ability to safely take kids there on evening walks and bike rides after another dreaded day of working from home and distance learning. Not surprisingly, nobody’s happy with the current setup.
A group of bicyclists and pedestrians who love the fully-closed-to-cars Twin Peaks Boulevard argue the city needs more carfree space, not less.
They created a GoFundMe with the intent to file an appeal to the partial reopening to cars under the California Environmental Quality Act and quickly raised more than enough money to pay for it. Now, though, it’s unclear if CEQA had anything to do with the initial closure to cars or the partial reopening, and the group isn’t sure it can file an appeal.
It will be a delicious bit of irony if they do, though. The city is fighting off five CEQA appeals to emergency transit projects, including its Slow Streets program to close some residential streets to through traffic so people can exercise while socially distanced. Other appeals include the SFMTA’s emergency bus lanes to whisk essential workers to their jobs and emergency street closures for popup food pantries and coronavirus testing sites.
All of that good work is on hold — hopefully just until Tuesday afternoon when the Board of Supervisors is expected to hear the appeals from attorney Mary Miles and gadfly David Pilpel and handily reject them. That’s my prediction — not theirs. The city attorney recently reminded the 11 supervisors they’re not supposed to state their positions on CEQA appeals before they’re heard.
Mayor London Breed’s administration is still crafting proposed changes to the CEQA appeals process to make it harder to file an appeal of emergency transit projects and hopes to introduce legislation in two weeks. On Monday, a representative of her staff met with officials from the city attorney’s office, the SFMTA and Supervisor Matt Haney. Haney said the group is leaning toward allowing work to continue while it’s being appealed and requiring 50 signatures to appeal some projects, but not others. The details are still being worked out.
Also on Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation from state Sen. Scott Wiener making it easier for some public transit projects to advance without CEQA review.
Two more transitrelated CEQA appeals have been filed since I wrote about the other five, both related to Muni service changes. One was filed by the Safeway at Church and Market streets related to the JChurch, and the other was more general and was filed by, yes, David Pilpel. Each one takes SFMTA staff about 100 hours, time that could be far better spent on other matters.
Stacey Randecker, an avid bicyclist in Potrero Hill who launched the GoFundMe, is beyond frustrated by the whole Twin Peaks debacle.
“The whole notion that CEQA is being used to stop things that help our environment, and we can’t use it to do the things that would heal our environment is just mindblowing,” she said. “How are regular people supposed to advocate for themselves? Only the wealthy, only the connected can actually make things happen.
“I think it’s garbage,” she added.
Gary Russ agrees. He’s one of the most outspoken neighbors along Burnett Avenue and said nothing’s gotten any better under the new configuration. There’s still noise, trash and car breakins. As part of the socalled compromise, the city installed noparking signs on one part of Burnett Avenue, but it’s not enforced and people are still cramming their cars there, Russ said.
“That was no compromise,” he said. “They just simply develop a plan and then execute it and we find out about it after the fact.”
So what would make sense? Randecker and Burnett both have ideas that are far better than City Hall’s.
Randecker would like to see Twin Peaks Boulevard remain fully closed to cars with the exception of a shuttle that carries the elderly, disabled and other people who can’t make the trek up the hill. Or open it up to cars one Sunday a month like Sunday Streets allows walkers and bicyclists to take over the pavement occasionally.
Or why not tweak the 37Corbett Muni bus route so it can
“That was no compromise. They just simply develop a plan and then execute it and we find out about it after the fact.”
Gary Russ, Burnett Avenue resident
get people to the top? Or have police officers regularly patrol the Burnett Avenue side of the mountain to actually deal with the problems rather than moving them?
Russ has sent a letter to the city suggesting that the twolane Twin Peaks Boulevard become oneway for cars, leaving the other lane for bicyclists and pedestrians. (This seems dicey to have them in such close proximity, though.) A better suggestion is to open the Burnett Avenue side to cars and permanently close the Portola side. Cars could access the parking lot at the overlook, but nothing else on the top of the mountain.
Jillian Puente, who lives in Noe Valley, loves taking her 2 ½yearold son, Nico, to the top of Twin Peaks to run and play with no worries about traffic. With playgrounds closed, it’s one of the few places she can take him. She doesn’t think the current solution makes much sense and is hopeful a compromise can be struck that protects the carfree, delightful atmosphere at the top.
“It’s one of the silver linings of the pandemic,” she said. “We’re hoping they can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”
Here’s hoping. Twin Peaks circa 2020 is too good to give up.