Script preview: Freeway Revolts

Hi everyone! I've pasted the script for my next video, on the freeway revolts in San Francisco. If you notice anything wrong or something I didn't cover, let me know. I hope you enjoy.

Freeway Revolts

I’m here in the Panhandle in San Francisco. This park, which connects to the much larger Golden Gate Park down that way, would not be here if not for activists in the 1950s and 1960s. They fought a proposal to turn this entire park into a freeway. More than that, they fought a plan to build a Los Angeles-sized network of freeways in San Francisco, and won. In this video I’m going to tell the fascinating and inspiring story of how San Francisco saved itself from the freeway.

[Intro]

Our story begins in 1951. The car was reshaping American cities and more people than ever were buying homes in the suburbs and relying on freeways for their commutes into the central city. Planners, responding to this trend, drafted a plan for San Francisco’s freeways that would rival Los Angeles. The plan called for 25 miles of elevated freeways that carved up San Francisco. 

Nobody paid much attention to the plan until the California Highway Commission voted to expedite construction of the Embarcadero Freeway, a short stretch of highway from the 1951 plan. 

As construction began on the access ramps for the Embarcadero in 1953, 1954, and 1955, San Francisco residents began to realize what destruction these freeways would cause. Neighborhoods would be destroyed and access to the waterfront would be severed, all to serve the needs of suburban commuters. It was a bad deal. Citizen groups proposed alternative designs, but state highway authorities refused to consider tunnels or other modifications. In 1955, the San Francisco Chronicle panned the Embarcadero project, comparing it to the ugly Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle. Check out my video on the removal of that freeway to learn more.

In 1956, construction began on the Embarcadero proper. Around this time, residents revolted against a planned freeway to link San Mateo county to the Golden Gate Bridge. County Supervisor and freeway opponent William Blake rallied his fellow supervisors to cancel the freeway outright. Mayor George Christopher vetoed the board’s resolution but commissioned his own study of the western route, distrustful of state highway engineers. In an effort to further stall the process, the board of supervisors commissioned their own study.

California had a lot of state money to build highways already, but in June of 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Interstate Highway and Defense Act. Eisenhower’s act gave states unprecedented amounts of money to build freeways. For every dollar a state spent on freeways, the federal government would kick in 9. Money was not an obstacle at all and the state could afford to build as many freeways in San Francisco as it wanted. And it wanted to build a lot.

Flush with cash, the California Division of Highways designed a statewide freeway system that called for 12,500 miles of freeways — one third the size of the federal government’s proposal for a nationwide system. The California proposal called for the construction of all 25 miles of the 1951 San Francisco plan. If it’s not clear by now, the battle lines were drawn. On one side stood the state and federal governments, with huge sums of money and engineers ready to build as many freeways as they could. On the other side stood San Francisco residents and their board of supervisors, who had very real concerns about the traffic and pollution the freeways would bring, not to mention the neighborhoods that would need to be leveled. Furthermore, they loved their views. San Francisco was then and is now a truly beautiful city, and residents did not want freeways to mar their view.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, responding to the State’s proposal, gutted the 1951 25 mile plan, recommending that the amount of freeways be cut by 75 percent. This sent lawmakers in Sacramento into a fury, as it stalled other project statewide as well. But the board voted unanimously, precluding a mayoral veto like the one in 1956. The mayor, who’s position on freeways was somewhere between the Board and the State, worked to produce a revised, compromise plan.

In 1960, the Mayor Christopher presented the revised plan. It restored only two freeways cancelled by the board in 1959, the western freeway and the golden gate freeway, though the plan called for the golden gate freeway to be built at some later date.

Now, compromises and revisions sound great, unless that compromise means reviving a freeway that would destroy your house and neighborhood. San Francisco residents were not in favor of reinstating the Western Freeway, to put it mildly. The protests and public outcry were fierce. Supervisor Blake, bolstered by 30,000 signatures against the western freeway, rallied the board to unanimously shoot down it down, as well as the mayor’s entire revised plan. The resident protests were so effective that even state authorities viewed the Western Freeway as dead at that point. This victory was truly a grassroots one. Parks advocates revolted against the idea of repurposing parkland for freeeways, like in the Panhandle. The environmental movement was just taking off at this point, and people worried about the freeways effect on the urban forest. The anti-freeway advocates were brushed off as “doughty ladies and lusty housewives” in the media, but despite sexist attacks, were able to accomplish their goals. An anti-freeway lobbying group popped up in Sacramento, and led to even more protests and revolts in 1962. 

1961 is also a big year for the San Francisco BART system, which did not exist at this time. But as it became clear that residents were not interested in seeing their city bisected by freeways, mass transit became an attractive alternative and political momentum to build the service began to snowball.

Despite the victories of residents, the State government was not ready to give up on San Francisco’s freeways that easily. In 1962 they came to the conclusion that problem was marketing. The Embarcadero was ugly and not a good poster child for future freeways. They decided to design a beautiful freeway that residents would accept, right through the panhandle. The city agreed to let the state study the proposal for a panhandle freeway and a cross-town tunnel. The cross-town tunnel was the board’s own idea, not something the State Highway Division had devised.

While they were scheming up ways to put lipstick on the freeway pig, the state tried to play hardball with freeway funding. In 1963, and the Highway Division threatened to shift $100 million dollars earmarked for San Francisco freeways down to Los Angeles unless the city approved the Golden Gate freeway along the waterfront in 60 days. Facing this ultimatum, the Board called their bluff, said no to the Golden Gate Freeway and endorsed their cross-town tunnel project. Furthermore, the Board called for the demolition of the Embarcadero and a completely underground Golden Gate Freeway. At this point, the board was not interested in anything above ground, no matter the cost.

In 1964, the State released its pig with lipstick - the report on the Crosstown Tunnel and Panhandle freeway. The State shot down the board’s Crosstown tunnel; they said it was too expensive, even considering the vast sums of money available to build freeways. The State found its own proposal for the Panhandle freeway to be inexpensive and recommended it be built. The City looked at the designs for the Panhandle and was not impressed. They believed that the State botched the design and sent the them back to the drawing board. This delay was fortuitous because in 1964 the Federal Government passed the Civil Rights Act. At the time, the Panhandle neighborhood was a largely poor African-American neighborhood. State Highway engineers and policymakers dubbed poor black neighborhoods as blight and ripe for slum clearance in the form of highway construction. The Civil Rights Act now provided recourse for such racially-targeted policies. The Board rejected the Panhandle plan and the city’s first black supervisor, Terry Francois, cast the deciding vote against it. Internally, the State ignored the City’s vote and the Highway Commission unanimously approved the Panhandle freeway and authorized the Department of Public works to begin buying up property along the route in the hopes that the City would change its mind.

In 1965, the State Highway Division released its study of the all-underground Golden Gate Freeway, like the City had asked for. Only, the State’s design wasn’t all underground. It was mostly a depressed roadway. No surprise, the Board of Supervisors rejected that plan. This was really the final salvo in the freeway battle. The City and its residents had won. Governor Brown… not that one, his dad… said, “The greatest tragedy is the lack of courage of San Francisco officials to build beautiful freeways.”

But… not so fast. In 1966 the zombies of the Golden Gate and Panhandle Freeways were reanimated by the state. The city and its residents, weary after a decade of fighting and opposing this issue, looked ready to throw in the towel. The initial Board of Supervisor straw poll was 6-5 in favor of the new freeways. Supervisor Blake, in a last-ditch play, told the board that he had to be out of town on city business for three weeks. The board agreed to delay the vote until he came back. In that time, freeway opponents regained their energy and protests engulfed the city. When Blake got back, two supervisors switched their votes and the freeways were dead. For real this time. 

Anti-Freeway activists in San Francisco were some of the most successful of any in the United States. Of the 25 miles of freeways proposed in 1951, only a small fraction were built. Activists in other cities also saved significant parts of their cities from the freeways. Check out this map of the plan for Washington, DC’s freeway network. It would have destroyed DC as we know it. An estimated 200,000 housing units would have been destroyed, and most of those black households. And in recent years, cities have even began tearing down underused and unwanted freeways. In San Francisco, the City finally removed the hated Embarcadero freeway after the 1989 earthquake damaged it. The same earthquake damaged the northern section of the Central Freeway and it was replaced with a really pleasant multi-way boulevard. Today, San Francisco residents don’t fear the freeway and are focused on improving BART and other mass transit services, thanks in large part due to activists 50 years ago.