| Marin Independent Journal.
Editorial
Sunday, March 26, 2000 |
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"Blood Alley" can’t be
fixed
fast enough |
LET’S HOPE we are finally on the road toward making
Doyle Drive safer. This frightening stretch of high-way between the Golden Gate Bridge and San
Francisco’s Marina District has endangered the lives of motorists and their
passengers for far too long. Engineers, state and local officials
and citizens panes have been looking at Doyle Drive for years, but progress
has been minimal. Now, at last, the San Francisco County Transportation
Authority is getting serious about exploring a safety overhaul of this busy
segment of Highway 101, an approach to the south entry of the Golden Gate
Bridge.
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| One alternative is based on an idea advanced by Michael Painter, a Mill
Valley landscape architect who believes, as thousands of Mann and San
Francisco residents do, that there must be a way to make this thoroughfare
many call “Blood Alley” better and safer. Countless accidents have
occurred on the roadway since its construction in 1936.
However, Painter’s
award-winning design a parkway with six lanes and easily navigable
interchanges is expensive, as are the other three alternatives
under consideration. All have price tags of at least $200 million.
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Meanwhile, as many as 141,000 motorists a day use Doyle Drive, which
has no safety barrier and consists of a web of narrow lanes merging at
just about the same time traffic is funneled into the Toll Plaza.
The commission is on target to start the environmental review process and
approve a plan by 2003. That
can’t be soon enough.
Replacing this vital stretch in the Bay Area’s
transportation network will be a huge undertaking, an enormous toll in funds
and anticipated delays for motorists because of construction. This
project must move forward now. The longer it’s put off, the more we put at
risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of motorists from Mann and
throughout the Bay Area.
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"Return Home Safe"
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