BAY AREA QUAKE : Quake Fires Up Embarcadero Freeway Haters

SAN FRANCISCO —  The earth had barely stopped shaking last week when retired electrical engineer Norman Rolfe was on the phone with his fellow veterans of San Francisco’s freeway wars.

The long-reviled Embarcadero Freeway had just been shut down after sustaining major damage in the earthquake. According to Rolfe, he and his cronies were all asking the same question: “Why don’t we complete the job that Mother Nature started?”

Thus began the latest chapter in the drive to tear down the Embarcadero Freeway, a campaign that has been waged with varying levels of intensity since the bulky, 1.2-mile double-decked structure was opened to traffic 30 years ago.

Never mind that parts of two other double-deckers in San Francisco sustained even heavier damage in the quake. The Embarcadero is the freeway that many San Franciscans love to hate.

Local politicians have long garnered votes by bashing the little stub of a freeway, which was supposed to stretch across the city to the Golden Gate Bridge but was short-circuited in the city’s 1950s freeway rebellion. In 1984, as mayor, Dianne Feinstein even hauled out a huge mallet and smashed a 64-foot-long model of the freeway made of cake.

This, after all, is a city that takes its views seriously, and the Embarcadero Freeway--which runs from the Bay Bridge to North Beach--commits the unpardonable sin of walling off the financial district from the bay. It has been called an “eyesore,” a “concrete monster,” an “abomination” and worse.

But the freeway had never been called a menace to public safety, and that is the tag opponents will now try to hang on it. Indeed, some Caltrans officials and independent experts say the Embarcadero, which shares many design features with the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland, came close to collapsing in the Oct. 17 quake.

“It was built during the same time period, with the same design, on the same kind of landfill” as the section of the Nimitz that collapsed, killing dozens of people, said Jon Twichell, a San Francisco planning consultant.

“There’s no way around it: Safety is now a real issue,” added Twichell, who led the last serious drive to raze the Embarcadero structure in 1986.

That year, to practically everyone’s surprise, the Embarcadero Freeway was spared by San Francisco’s voters when, in an advisory ballot, they voted by a margin of nearly 2 to 1 to retain the structure.

Voters at the time were suspicious of an alliance to tear down the freeway that had been struck between environmentalists and downtown office building owners, whose property values would have been enhanced by the freeway’s removal.

They were also chilled by the prospect of massive traffic jams and the $171-million price tag for the tear-down and a package of waterfront improvements including a landscaped boulevard for cars and a pair of trolley lines.

“The attitude was: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ ” Twichell recalled. “Well, now it’s broke. So the question is: Do we fix it or tear it down?”

San Francisco Supervisor Richard Hongisto, who over the years has been the freeway’s staunchest backer, said his support for the roadway was unshaken by the quake. “The need for this freeway remains great. I’ll agree to tear down the Embarcadero when you agree to level half of our downtown office buildings,” Hongisto said.

“Obviously, it needs to be completely repaired. If it can’t be repaired, it should be replaced with some other structure that can bring in as many cars--or more of them,” he added, tweaking the freeway’s opponents.

Caltrans crews have already begun work to shore up the six concrete columns that were cracked and will soon begin wrapping the columns with steel cable. “It’s kind of like putting a Band-Aid on,” explained Jerry Hauke, a senior transportation engineer with the department.

But while the work will be completed within weeks, the Embarcadero Freeway will remain closed for at least six months while a special commission impaneled by Gov. George Deukmejian investigates the precise cause of the Nimitz collapse--and the degree of risk posed by the Embarcadero and other double-decked freeways in another strong earthquake.

“I believe the Embarcadero Freeway was much stronger than the Nimitz,” said Hauke. “The evidence is there right now: one is up and the other is down.” Hauke said there are some differences in the designs of the Nimitz and the Embarcadero, though he declined to enumerate them.

But the case for removing the Embarcadero may be bolstered by statements made by other Caltrans officials.

James Roberts, chief of the agency’s division of structures, said earlier this week that “there’s a pretty good chance the Embarcadero Freeway would do the same thing Interstate 880 (the Nimitz) did” in the event of another large quake. An independent bridge engineering expert, Ronald Mayes, said that, in his opinion, the Embarcadero would have collapsed had last week’s quake lasted five seconds more.

Politicians, silenced for three years by the 1986 vote in support of the freeway, are once again picking up their sledgehammers. “What if we repaired it and it fell down and killed people?” asked Supervisor Terence Hallinan.

“It seems to me we’ve been put on notice: Should anyone be killed now, we’d be financially and morally responsible,” he added.

Douglas Wright, San Francisco’s deputy mayor for transportation and public works, is ducking the question. “We’re concerned, but it’s Caltrans’ responsibility. We’ve been busy enough with our own damaged structures.”

Sources said Mayor Art Agnos is worried that if the freeway is revived as an issue it will divert attention from his pet project of building a new downtown baseball stadium.

Even the freeway’s most ardent opponents are stepping gingerly. “We don’t want people to accuse us of being vultures,” said Twichell.

Still, he added, “my inclination is to go out and raise some hell and go for it. This city is here because of the bay, but if you’re not a tourist at Fisherman’s Wharf, you don’t get a chance to enjoy it.”