Down With the Monstrosity!

It’s not often that a city gets a chance to correct a mistake as big as the Embarcadero Freeway, the massive double-decked highway that is one of the few eyesores in San Francisco--a town otherwise famous for its scenery and the collective good sense to preserve it.

As originally envisioned by California’s mega-builders of the 1950s, the Embarcadero was to link the Golden Gate Bridge (U.S. Highway 101) with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (Interstate 80) by cutting along San Francisco’s waterfront. Because it would have taken out parts of North Beach, Fisherman’s Wharf and the Marina District along the way, a community uproar halted the project. So the freeway now comes to an abrupt end near the city’s Financial District and Chinatown. Because it blocks inland views of San Francisco Bay and the city’s historic Ferry Building, the Embarcadero has long been the highway many folks in the Bay Area love to hate.

Last October’s Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the freeway so severely it had to be closed. (It did not collapse, thankfully, like another double-decked freeway in Oakland.) Now there’s a surprisingly fierce debate under way in San Francisco over whether the Embarcadero Freeway should be repaired.

Chinatown’s merchants in particular claim business will suffer if inbound tourists no longer leave the freeway in their neighborhood. Mayor Art Agnos proposes using federal and state money earmarked for repairing the freeway to build a wide, tree-lined waterfront boulevard in its place.

Our northern neighbors have done a fine job of preserving their lovely city without much advice from us. But in this case--since out-of-town tourism is part of the debate--we opt for tearing down that Monstrosity by the Bay. Chinatown, and the rest of San Francisco’s charms, can only be enhanced by its removal.