San Francisco Debates Tearing Down More Freeways

After the successful removal of the Embarcadero and Central freeways, and their replacement with attractive street-level boulevards, "Mayor Ed Lee is floating the idea of tearing down the stub end of Interstate 280 in San Francisco in hopes of creating a new neighborhood and speeding up the arrival of high-speed rail service downtown," report Matier and Ross.

"The idea, laid out by the mayor's chief transit planner, Gillian Gillett, in a memo to the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission, would be to knock down I-280 before 16th Street - eliminating the ramps both at Sixth and Brannan streets and at Fourth and King streets."

"The plan also calls for clearing out the adjacent rail yard to make way for a high-speed rail line," they add. However, "some transit insiders worry that a potential fight over a freeway pull-down could actually slow the high-speed rail planning process."