Lee Heidhues 4.28.2023
It was three years ago on April 28, 2020 when Mayor Breed, during the midst of the Pandemic, decreed that a 1.5 mile portion of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park would be a dedicated pedestrian and cyclist oasis.
Three years later JFK Promenade is now a permanent fixture in the San Francisco landscape. It was not an easy victory. Advocates had to wind their way through the City’s byzantine bureaucracy of multiple agencies and different agendas. Finally, the Board of Supervisors voted 7-4 to make JFK Promenade permanent.
But that was not the end. Motorists do not shut off their rhetorical engines quietly.
A lawsuit was filed and went all the way to the California Court of Appeal before being dismissed. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco sponsored a ballot measure to bring cars back to JFK Promenade. The Board of Supervisors put a competing measure on the ballot to maintain JFK Promenade. It won a smashing victory with 63 percent of the vote in November 2022.
To celebrate the third anniversary of this car free oasis a large number of people of all ages came out on a foggy afternoon to bask in the well earned and hard fought victory.
https://sfrecpark.org/1538/JFK-Promenade
Lee's Perspective 