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.
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.
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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