The City: San Francisco Still Says No

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Seven years ago, many a San Franciscan watched with mounting wrath as a new, three-lane elevated highway bulldozed across Market Street, visually cutting in half the cherished, campanile-like Ferry Building. Overnight, protest groups sprang up to stage the historic "freeway revolt" of 1959. The Embarcadero Freeway was stopped in midair, just as it was about to march across the grassy Marina waterfront and cut off the house holders' view of the bay. At the same time, San Franciscans voted to stop seven superhighways at the city limits.

Ever since, the city fathers have debated what to do as the auto-congested city turned into what federal authorities describe as "the No. 1 highway bottleneck in the U.S." Last week the eleven city supervisors faced a crucial turning point. Up for approval were two freeway projects: one would tunnel under Golden Gate Park to link up the south with the Golden Gate Bridge (and "destroy the world's most beautiful park," according to opponents); the other would extend the Embarcadero along the waterfront. Acceptance of the two, critics claimed, would destroy $92.1 million in existing property. Rejection would mean loss of an offered federal road-building subsidy of $250 million.

In what turned out to be the wildest freeway hearing in memory at City Hall, 41 civic protest groups cheered and jeered as the council debated, then with a close 6-to-5 vote decided to keep the view and let the traffic pile up.

California Governor Pat Brown im mediately dispatched officials to Washington to keep the money within the state. As for San Francisco's need for an intercity freeway system, Mayor John Shelley all but despaired.Said he: "There will be a freeway to the moon before we get one in San Francisco."