The San Francisco freeway revolt was not just the first but the longest 1960s protest against superhighway construction in urban areas. Most accounts attribute this to the city's dramatic natural setting, which fostered an early and insistent aesthetic critique. This article identifies the critical condition in not the city but the state. In 1947, the California legislature reoriented its entire highway program from multipurpose roads to limited-access freeways designed to go directly into cities. Resituating the revolt in this context explains not just its precocity but its duration and intensity. What began as a reasonable assertion of local jurisdiction was transformed into a protracted standoff with the state by the vast new funding of the Interstate and Defense Highway Act of 1956. It also reveals how close the city came to losing the revolt, despite the legitimacy of its claims, and identifies a direct impact of this narrow victory on the emerging environmental movement.
See especially Tom Lewis, Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life (London: Viking, 1997), 271, 398; and Ben Kelley, The Pavers and the Paved (New York: Donald W. Brown , 1971).
2.
By way of contrast with San Francisco, freeway protests in Manhattan cancelled a comparable mileage but gave up little in federal aid. "Westway: No Way? City Eyes a Switch," New York Daily News, September 17, 1985, 4. In the early 1980s, New York City exercised a "trade-in" option created by the Federal Highway Act of 1973 enabling it to redirect some $1.4 billion in interstate highway funds to the city's aging mass transit system.
3.
For studies of the San Francisco revolt, see especially William Issel, "Land Values, Human Values, and the Preservation of the City's Treasured Appearance: Environmentalism, Politics, and the San Francisco Freeway Revolt," Pacific Historical Review 68, no. 4 (1999), Herbert M. Goodwin, "California's Growing Freeway System" (PhD dissertation, University of California, 1969); William Lathrop, "San Francisco Freeway Revolt," Transportation Engineering Journal 97 (1971); Seymour M. Adler, "The Political Economy of Transit in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-1963" (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1980); and David W. Jones, California's Freeway Era in Historical Perspective (Berkeley, CA: Institute of Transportation Studies, 1989). For the influence of aesthetic concerns on San Francisco politics more generally, see Richard E. DeLeon, Left Coast City: Progressive Politics in San Francisco, 1975-1991 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992); Frederick M. Wirt, Power in the City: Decision Making in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).
4.
Issel, "Land Values, Human Values," 619.
5.
This summary of the parallel bridge dispute is drawn from Adler, "The Political Economy of Transit," 31-54, and Jones, California's Freeway Era, 263-73.
6.
"Parallel Bridge Endorsed by Governor Warren," California Highways and Public Works28, no. 2 (1949).
7.
U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, " Easement for Construction of Toll Cross in SF Bay," July 8, 1949, 96-99, quoted in Adler, " The Political Economy of Transit," 51.
8.
Jones, California's Freeway Era, 298. The quote is attributed to City Planning Director Jack Kent. City planners played an especially prominent role in this dispute because, unlike their counterparts in other cities, their job included transit planning: San Francisco was one of the few cities at the time that had municipalized its transit system. Note also that the parallel bridge was backed in the state legislature by San Francisco's rival city, Oakland, which had a privately owned and operated transit system.
9.
Goodwin, "California's Growing Freeway System," 28-60. For a good synopsis of the history of California's highway program, see Jeffrey Brown, "Statewide Transportation Planning: Lessons from California," Transportation Quarterly 56, no. 2 (2002). For a good overview of highway programs in other states, see Robert S. Friedman, "State Politics and Highways," in Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis, ed. Herbert Jacob and Kenneth Vines (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), 411-46. An aspect of the California highway machine that was perhaps more insular than most was the fact that the Department of Public Works acted as both staff and chair of the California Highway Commission. This link was broken by the state legislature in 1968. Goodwin, "California's Growing Freeway System," 39, 53.
10.
For a good history of the federal highway program, see Bruce E. Seely, Building the American Highway System: Engineers as Policy Makers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987). Political scientists use the terms policy subsystem and iron triangle to describe the federal highway program, emphasizing the interlocking congressional committees, executive agencies, and industry lobbies at the federal level. For a discussion of these concepts, see Hugh Helco, A Government of Strangers: Executive Politics in Washington (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1977). Seely's account indicates that this unusual power was a product of the federal system, which divides sovereignty between two levels of government. The American Association of State Highway Officials, for example, achieved a remarkable degree of deference from Congress by acting as a kind of parallel legislature of state experts. For a good study illustrating the insularity of highway professionals produced by this system, see Louis Ward Kemp, "Aesthetes and Engineers: The Occupational Ideology of Highway Design," Technology and Culture 27, no. 4 (1986).
11.
U.S. Department of Transportation, Table Sf-201: Revenues Used by States for Highways, 1921-1995 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, 1997), http://www.fhwa.dot.gov. By 1948, all forty-eight states had established a state gas tax dedicated to their highway program, and some states were already on their third rate increase. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Table G-205: State Gas Tax Rates; Highway Statistics to 1955 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Public Roads, 1955), 13.
12.
Urban complaints found a political voice with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who owed his margin of victory to the urban vote. In 1934 Congress passed an amendment to the Federal Highway Act requiring that a share of all federal highway aid be spent in cities for the first time. The Roosevelt administration also gave a larger share of public works funding to the Works Progress Administration rather than the federal Bureau of Public Roads. U.S. Department of Transportation, Table Fa-205: Federal Funds Expended for Highways, by Agency 1921-1995; Highway Statistics to 1995 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, 1997), http://www.fhwa.dot.gov.
13.
Between 1921 and 1941, the mileage of paved roads in the U.S. quadrupled, from 387,000 to 1.6 million miles, substantially outpacing the growth of motor vehicle registrations. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Table M-200, Surfaced Mileage; Highway Statistics to 1955 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Public Roads, 1955); U.S. Department of Transportation, Table Mv-200: State Motor Vehicle Registrations (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, 1995), http://www.fhwa.dot.gov. By 1937, traffic fatalities had reached 38,000 per year, almost six times the current rate. U.S. Department of Transportation, Table F1-200: Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities 1900-1995; Highway Statistics to 1995 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, 1997), http://www.fhwa.dot.gov.
14.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Toll Roads and Free Roads (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Public Roads, 1939). Roosevelt's Interregional Highway Commission justified the shift to superhighways as a cure for "years of promiscuous building" that had produced "thousands of disconnected little pieces of roads." National Interregional Highway Committee, Interregional Highways (Washington, DC: National Interregional Highway Committee, 1944), 1. Also see Jonathan L. Gifford, An Analysis of the Federal Role in the Planning, Design and Deployment of Rural Roads, Toll Roads and Urban Freeways (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1983), 134-40.
15.
Federal highway aid dropped off significantly from its 1938 high as measured in real dollar terms and as a percentage of gross national product. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Table Sb 201-A: Highway Finance; Highway Statistics to 1955 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Public Roads, 1955). For a discussion of the toll road movement, see Wilfred Owen and Charles L. Dearing, Toll Roads and the Problem of Highway Modernization (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1951); Gifford, An Analysis of the Federal Role, 212-22.
16.
Seely, Building the American Highway System, 137-40. The 1944 report of the Interregional Highway Committee called for a fivefold increase in federal aid authorizations; National Interregional Highway Committee, Interregional Highways, 126.
17.
"Collier-Burns Highway Act," California Highways and Public Works 26, no. 4 (1947); "How Money for Highways Is Collected and Spent," California Highways and Public Works 29, no. 2 (1950).
18.
Though the idea of tapping the greater traffic potential in the cities as a means of funding the lightly traveled roads in between was first laid out in the 1939 report noted above (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Toll Roads and Free Roads, 95) and re-endorsed by Roosevelt's Interregional Highway Commission in 1944 (National Interregional Highway Committee, Interregional Highways, 40-41, 126), few politicians had grasped the political efficacy of this fiscal logic before state senator Randolph Collier set out on his extensive "fact-finding mission" that became the Collier-Burns Act of 1947. California's precocity can be explained by the fact that the rural bias of its highway program was exaggerated by a north-south divide. As in most other states, highway funds were suballocated to counties. Because there are fewer counties in Southern California, however, this method consistently shortchanged the Los Angeles area, which was not only the fastest growing part of the state but also one that had committed itself to the automobile early on. This ensured that the "urban" grievance would dominate the state legislative agenda for years. See Jones, California's Freeway Era, 185-95. For a legislative history of the interstate highway program that focuses on the debates in Washington only, see Gary Schwartz, "Urban Freeways and the Interstate System," Southern California Law Journal 49, no. 3 (1976).
19.
The effect of this fiscal rationale can be seen in the transformation of Los Angeles freeways from the low-speed, landscaped parkways of the 1930s into massive unadorned concrete viaducts as the state of California took over the job. See especially Brian D. Taylor, "When Finance Leads Planning: Urban Planning, Highway Planning, and Metropolitan Freeways in California," Journal of Planning Education and Research 20 (2000). For a study that discusses the absence of these concerns in the pivotal freeway debates, see Raymond Mohl, "Ike and the Interstates: Creeping toward Comprehensive Planning," Journal of Planning History 2, no. 3 (2003).
20.
For a detailed account of the Embarcadero dispute sympathetic to the highway engineers, see Goodwin, "California's Growing Freeway System," 419-38. In the 1951 plan, the Embarcadero turned away from the waterfront at Broadway just south of Telegraph Hill, where it connected with a planned extension of the Central Freeway. The double-decker design was proposed to minimize property takings. Completion of new ramps from the Bay Bridge in 1953 gave opponents a preview of how they would actually look.
21.
"Progress on the Embarcadero," California Highways and Public Works36, no. 2 (1957).
22.
The route ran along the 19th Street corridor and across Golden Gate Park. "Protest of State Plan: 1600 Sunset Residents Meet, Blast Freeway," San Francisco Chronicle, April 18, 1956, 2. Richard Reinhardt, "Supervisors Ban Western Freeway: Chambers Packed for Debate," San Francisco Chronicle, June 12, 1956, 1. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is the city's legislative body. It consists of eleven members elected at large. San Francisco is both a city and a county under California law.
23.
Several scholars have argued that San Francisco had special veto power over freeways that other cities lacked. See especially Alan Lupo, Frank C. Colcord, and Edmund P. Fowler, Rites of Way: The Politics of Transportation in Boston and the U.S. City (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 181; Richard M. Zettel, Urban Transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area (Berkeley, CA: Institute of Governmental Studies, 1963), 32-34. A close reading of the events, however, suggests that it was the 1956 revolt that clarified things. Goodwin documents considerable debate in the state legislature on this point in the wake of the 1956 revolt. Goodwin, "California's Growing Freeway System," 42-44. More generally, jurisdiction over city streets is part of the general "police powers" delegated to municipalities from the state legislature. Given the importance of "home rule" in America's legal and political traditions, the bigger puzzle is how few cities called a similar time-out as freeway protests emerged. The better explanation for San Francisco's precocity is not special powers but the special institutional conditions discussed herein. It was not only the first city of its size and density to face a fully conceived, publicly funded urban freeway program-other cities where freeway revolts broke out in the 1950s confronted public authorities whose independence from the state legislature was reinforced by the terms of their bond covenants-but it did so before the federal highway program fixed the basic presumptions of the California freeway approach in bureaucratic stone. For a good review of the home rule tradition in the American political system, see Richard Briffault, "Our Localism: Part I-the Structure of Local Government Law," Columbia Law Review 90, no. 1 (1990).
24.
Blake's political pedigree is especially relevant in this regard. He was appointed to the Board of Supervisors by Elmer Robinson, the mayor who had led the charge against the parallel bridge, to succeed Marvin E. Lewis, the supervisor who had spearheaded efforts to develop a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system as an alternative to the state's freeway system. The city's new mayor, George Christopher, who had been president of the Board of Supervisors through both disputes, at one point halted construction of the Embarcadero pending the result of a new study. San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Past Supervisors (San Francisco: San Francisco Board of Supervisors, 2006), http://www.sfgov.org. Also, 1956 was the year that hearings were held on the abandonment of the Bay Bridge trolley service, which increased popular discontent with state highway authorities, who had made no attempt to accommodate alternative transit proposals. San Francisco Chronicle, January 4, 1955. See Adler, "The Political Economy of Transit," 209-27.
25.
San Francisco Chronicle, June 13, 1956, 22; Lathrop, "San Francisco Freeway Revolt," 136.
26.
U.S. Department of Transportation, Table Sf-202c: State Government Capital Outlay for Highways, by State, 1921-1995: Highway Statistics to 1995 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, 1997), http://www.fhwa.dot.gov; Jones, California's Freeway Era, 243-45. The Federal Highway Administration shows a 60 percent increase in capital outlays for highways in California over the same period.
27.
"Board Unit Opens War on Freeways," San Francisco Chronicle, January 23, 1959, 1. According to the article, Streets Committee Chairman William Blake "fed two red-faced highway engineers to a cheering crowd of more than 200 freeway opponents."
28.
"Tongue-Lashing by Senator: S.F. Freeway Vote Decried," San Francisco Chronicle, January 30, 1959. According to Goodwin, Collier also threatened to redesignate 19th Avenue as a city street, forcing the city to pick up thousands of dollars per year in maintenance costs.
29.
"Legislative Response: S.F. May Lose $377 Million by Freeway Action," San Francisco Chronicle, January 28, 1959, 1; Jack Burby, "City Hall Talks: S.F. Chief Backs Freeway Ban: Ask New Routes," San Francisco Chronicle, January 31, 1959, 1.
30.
San Francisco Chronicle, April, 23, 1960. According to Seymour Adler, one of the leaders of the citizens' advisory committee, Chris McKeon, a real estate developer, proposed a beefed-up Southern freeway as a substitute for the Western, an option that would have precluded use of the freeway median for the proposed BART system. Adler, "The Political Economy of Transit," 315.
31.
City of San Francisco, Trafficways in San Francisco: A Reappraisal (San Francisco: Departments of City Planning and Public Works, 1960).
32.
"Freeway Plans Meet Roadblock," San Francisco Chronicle, April 16, 1961, James Benet, "Architects, Districts: City's Freeway Plan under Fire," San Francisco Chronicle, April 16, 1961, 2.
33.
Mel Wax , "Collier Gives City a New Freeway Plan," San Francisco Chronicle, May 16, 1961, 1.
34.
Mel Wax, "Mayor's Assessment: Politics Snag Freeways," San Francisco Chronicle, May 18, 1961. The freeway revolt also played out in the state legislature, where the battle line between downtown and the highway engineers was more strictly drawn. San Francisco assemblyman J. Eugene McAleer submitted legislation in March 1961 calling for state gas taxes to be used to tear down the Embarcadero-shortly after which the legislature approved a bill from Collier's Transportation Committee appropriating $500,000 to study another bay bridge crossing. "Build a Model of Freeway Plan," San Francisco Chronicle, May 19, 1961.
35.
San Francisco Examiner, July 11, 1961.
36.
"Transit, Freeways: Mayor Gets Glum Transport Picture," San Francisco Chronicle, August 5, 1961; "Talk, No Action: State Aide Can't Budge S.F. Freeway Stalemate," San Francisco Chronicle, August 17, 1961.
37.
San Francisco Chronicle, December 19, 1961. As city planning chief, James McCarthy explained, "Although one freeway would disrupt an area, its effect is far less than street modification." This prompted Supervisor James Leo Halley to complain, "They're trying to build up a wall of opposition to anything but the original Western Freeway."
38.
Goodwin, "California's Growing Freeway System," 271, 398. The scenic highways plan actually extended the takings power of state highway authorities to a 200 ft. right-of-way on either side of a designated route.
39.
"Fremont Assails Freeway Plan," San Francisco Chronicle, May 24, 1961, 2; "Highway Revolt in Palo Alto," San Francisco Chronicle, August 16, 1961. The power of eminent domain over state parkland had been granted to the Highway Division in 1937. Goodwin, "California's Growing Freeway System," 271, 398.
40.
"Parting Advice from Mumford," San Francisco Chronicle, January 16, 1962, 2. Mumford had just published what was to become his most famous work, The City in History (New York: Harcourt, 1961).
41.
"The Embarcadero: Help in Sight for Foes of Freeway," San Francisco Chronicle, April 18, 1962, 4. The new antifreeway lobby grew to some 250,000 members in just a few months. A large protest broke out in Marin County in April, followed by protests in Chico, Novato, Fair Oaks, Malibu, Santa Barbara, and Monterey.
42.
The preliminary design for BART-announced in 1956, the same year that the Interstate Highway Act flooded state highway coffers with even more funds-was a narrowly conceived supplement to the state's freeway system, requiring, in effect, that Bay Area residents pay for what state highway engineers were providing free. It also had the misfortune of coinciding with a public takeover of the Key System in Alameda County, which established a prior claim on BART's one remaining revenue source: the property tax. See Adler, "The Political Economy of Transit."
43.
BART directors submitted a formal request for the toll surplus just after the January 1959 supervisor vote against the state freeway plan. In quick succession, the supervisors dropped their longstanding support for the Southern Crossing, a bridge-cum-industrial revitalization project that had first claim on the surplus (February 1959), Bay Area mayors voted against a rival plan of the Bay Area Council (March 1959), and Governor Brown pressured Senator Collier into reassigning the surplus, which was running about $9 million a year at that point, sufficient to finance the $100 million cost of the BART tunnel (at the final hearings in June 1959, Collier was forced to defend himself against charges that withholding the funds from BART was a form of revenge against the city for the freeway revolt). San Francisco Chronicle, February 13, 1959, 28; March 21, 1959; May 5, 1959. Over the next three years, as the city struggled with its freeway plan, BART underwent the same process of negotiating routes and design at a much larger scale (five counties and scores of towns). This caused them to miss several election cycles but also contributed to a second political coup: in January 1961, in exchange for increased local representation on the BART board, the state legislature approved a critical reduction in the threshold required for the bond issue to pass. See Ibid., 267; Stephen Zwerling, Mass Transit and the Politics of Technology: A Study of Bart and the San Francisco Bay Area (New York: Praeger, 1974), 33-34.
44.
"Trends within the Golden Gate," BAC Newsletter, July 1961. In July 1961, just after the western defeat, Mayor Christopher proposed that tolls from all five Bay Area bridges be pledged to the BART plan. San Francisco Chronicle, July 29, 1961.
45.
"Pressure for Freeways," San Francisco Chronicle, January 31, 1962. The conference was called by the Down Town Association and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, both steadfast supporters of freeways.
46.
The landscape designers' contract would not go into effect unless the Board of Supervisors approved a new study
47.
Proposed just after the 1959 revolt, the "Blake Tunnel," as it was dubbed, was rejected by the Reappraisal Plan as lacking sufficient capacity to handle the projected traffic from Marin County, which would leave the waterfront vulnerable to another state bridge. Attempting to counter the official momentum behind the Western, the supervisors approved $20,000 to study the tunnel in February 1961. "Gate Span Surplus, Tunnel Study: Blake Gets Support for Pet Projects," San Francisco Chronicle, February 17, 1961; Mel Wax, "A Year and a Half Later: Blake Finally Promised Hearing on Tunnel Study," San Francisco Chronicle, March 14, 1961, 2.
48.
San Francisco Examiner, May 19, 1962.
49.
Mel Wax, "State Backtracks on City Freeways," San Francisco Chronicle, May 29, 1962, 1. Press reports indicate that the state initially stumbled into this strategy. Their negotiating engineer was publicly "benched" by his boss, most likely for revealing that the state would not take the tunnel seriously. San Francisco Chronicle, June 7, 1962.
50.
Intensifying the debate was the withdrawal of Marin County from the BART proposal, removing whatever technical or political cover it had provided the freeway revolt; now there would be no transit option for the city's wealthiest suburbs. This withdrawal ironically increased BART's chances of passage by bringing the bond issue to under $1 billion, the threshold its financial advisers said it was still viable. The BART referendum was approved in November 1962 by just over 61 percent of the vote in its three remaining counties: San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa.
51.
Board of Supervisors Resolution 326-62, June 13, 1962. "Crosstown Tunnel-New Bid for Study," San Francisco Chronicle, June 8, 1962, 14; Mel Wax, "City O.K.'s Study-with Curbs: A Freeway `Straitjacket,'" San Francisco Chronicle, June 12, 1962, 4. The November 1961 supervisor election contributed to this outcome by returning two of Mayor Christopher's handpicked appointees, Peter Tamaras and Joseph Tinney, and a profreeways newcomer, Jack Morrison. Also voting against Blake's resolution were three of his longtime allies in the freeway fight: Roger Boas (who introduced a separate resolution for a tunnel-panhandle comparison), Harold Dobbs, and John Ferndon.
52.
By way of comparison, San Francisco's general revenue in 1964 was $202 million, with total capital outlays of $51 million (total outlays for its own highways was only $7 million, the city's total debt outstanding was $248 million); U.S. Census Bureau, Data Base on Historical Finances of Municipal Governments: Fiscal Years 1951-2004 (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2006). The expected cost of the Panhandle Freeway alone was $135 million.
53.
Those that did, however, experienced a similar escalation of political opposition. In December 1962, the Board of Estimate of New York City cancelled the Lower Manhattan expressway in response to huge protests. See John E. Seley, Development of a Sophisticated Opposition: The Lower Manhattan Expressway Issue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1970). In Baltimore, provisions of the city's home rule charter kept the issue on the city's turf, creating a similarly arduous public process. See Raymond Mohl, "Stop the Road: Freeway Revolts in American Cities," Journal of Urban History 30, no. 5 (2004): 83-86.
54.
According to Goodwin, if San Francisco failed to claim its share, Southern California would lose hundreds of millions of dollars as well. This is because, under state formulas, all highway funds- including federal aid-had to be divided 45-55 between north and south. Goodwin, "California's Growing Freeway System," 499. It is doubtful, however, that the state legislature would have forced the rest of the state to pay for a San Francisco default.
55.
"Rejected Bridge Plans Revived," San Francisco Chronicle, October 25, 1962; "Additional Bridges Urgently Needed," California Highways and Public Works 42, no. 2 (1963); Goodwin, "California's Growing Freeway System," 492. Earlier that year, they had resumed plans to extend a freeway from the south to the Embarcadero stubs; "Extension Plans for Embarcadero," California Highways and Public Works 41, no. 3 (1962).
56.
San Francisco Board of Supervisors Resolution 458-63, August 13, 1963. The resolution was passed by a 7-4 vote and signed by Mayor Christopher the following day. San Francisco Chronicle August 13, 1963, 14. The state's effort to backtrack was reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, July 22-23 and 30-31, 1963.
San Francisco Board of Supervisors Resolution 605-63. Dobb's tri-tunnel plan was described in San Francisco Examiner, August 13, 1963.
59.
California Department of Public Works, San Francisco Panhandle Parkway and Crosstown Tunnel: Technical Report (Sacramento: California Department of Public Works, California Division of Highways, 1964).
60.
Ibid., 12, 13, 73, 80. Plans included a massive interchange in the Civic Center area that would take five city blocks.
61.
Ibid., 12, 36
62.
Mel Wax , "State Bungling: Freeway Chaos-the inside Story: Engineers Ignore Advice," San Francisco Chronicle, May 21, 1964, 1. The presiding engineer confessed he "had no idea" that the state had the authority to do what the city planners wanted.
63.
Key city officials behind the strategy included the chief city planner, James McCarthy, who authored the Reappraisal Plan, and the chief administrative officer, Sherman Duckel, who released a report just before the Panhandle hearings arguing that the cost of demolishing the Embarcadero was prohibitive and that the city would have to reimburse the federal government for the original construction costs if they did. San Francisco Chronicle, December 5, 1963; Goodwin, "California's Growing Freeway System," 494-95. Though John Shelley, the city's new mayor, committed himself to respecting a majority vote, as a former eight-term Democratic congressman, he would have been especially reluctant to compromise the city's pipeline to the federal purse-as would soon become clear.
64.
See especially Raymond Mohl, The Interstates and the Cities: Highways, Housing, and the Freeway Revolt (Washington, DC: Poverty and Race Research Action Council, 2002). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 also inspired the Free Speech Movement, which erupted on the Berkeley campus the same month that the Board of Supervisors reconsidered the Panhandle Freeway.
65.
"Hour of Decision on the Parkway," San Francisco Examiner, October 13, 1964; "Panhandle Parkway Loses," San Francisco Chronicle, October 14, 1964, 1. Mayor Shelley had appointed Terry Francois to the Board of Supervisors in September 1964 to replace John Ferdon who was reportedly in favor of the Panhandle Freeway (Ferdon left to become district attorney).
66.
"State Quits on S.F. Freeways," San Francisco Examiner, October 30, 1964, 14.
67.
"Anti-Freeway Celebration," San Francisco Chronicle , October 30, 1964, 7.
68.
Mel Wax, "Blake Still Hopeful for His Tunnel," San Francisco Chronicle, January 5, 1965; "The Concrete Highway Trip," San Francisco Chronicle, January 22, 1965, 36. The tunnels compared favorably with elevated freeways in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which toppled both the Embarcadero and portions of the MacArthur Freeway in Oakland but did little damage to the nearby Waldo and Caldicott tunnels cited in Blake's report.
69.
California Department of Public Works, San Francisco Golden Gate Freeway: Interstate Highway Route 480 ( Sacramento: California Department of Public Works, California Division of Highways, 1965).
70.
Waite Elmont , "A Re-Run Freeway Hearing," San Francisco Chronicle, April 10, 1965, 4.
71.
Mel Wax , "Gate Bridge: State Freeway Plan Rejected by Supervisors; Tunnel Idea Still Alive," San Francisco Chronicle , July 23, 1965, 1.
72.
San Francisco Chronicle, July 31, 1965. A reporter for the San Francisco Examiner quoted a similar complaint from the state public works director, John Erreca: "I see a lot of funny statements of Mayor Shelley even after its been explained to him. We tried to explain it step by step and then, somehow, its lost." Russ Cone, "Freeway Problem in Laps of Supervisors," San Francisco Examiner, September 1, 1965.
73.
"Embarcadero Freeway Issue," San Francisco Chronicle, August 18, 1965, 3. The all-underground route was re-endorsed by the supervisors in the same July 1965 vote against the state's plan.
74.
Goodwin, "California's Growing Freeway System," 499. According to Goodwin, the Highway Division had been authorized to consider this shift by the state legislature the year before.
75.
Mel Wax , "Freeway Funds `Saved' by Shelley," San Francisco Chronicle, September 4, 1965, 8. Shelly was an eight-term congressman before becoming mayor, giving him some Washington insider access.
76.
San Francisco Chronicle, September 20, 22, 27, 30, 1965. The governor's promise to keep San Francisco whole referred to the Breed Act of 1939. Several highway commissioners criticized him for suggesting this, and Mayor Shelley clearly did not trust the offer.
77.
San Francisco Chronicle, October 9, 10, 11, 14, 1965. Mayor Shelley and Supervisor Blake had confirmed with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Commerce Undersecretary Alan Boyd that tunnels were a feasible option for interstate segments.
78.
The highway commissioners also chose this moment to reject the city's request to reroute the Junipero Serra Freeway (I-280) away from the city's reservoir in San Mateo County, potentially costing the city several million dollars for a filtration plant. See Issel, "Land Values, Human Values."
79.
Doyle Jackson , "Highway Commission: S.F. Slapped on Tunnel Study, Freeway Funds, a Bad Day for S.F," San Francisco Chronicle , October 21, 1965, 1.
80.
George Christopher dropped out of the mayoral race in 1963 to focus on a run for governor. He was defeated by Ronald Reagan in the Republican primary the following year. Voters apparently did not blame the supervisors for the freeway mess. All five supervisors running for reelection that year were returned to office in the November election, including William Blake, Jack Morrison, Joseph Tinney, Roger Boas, and Pete Tamaras. San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Past Supervisors.
81.
San Francisco Chronicle November 11, 17, 18, 25, 1965.
82.
"A Pact to Go to Jail: Foes of Panhandle Freeway Threaten Drastic Action," San Francisco Chronicle, February 9, 1966.
83.
San Francisco Chronicle, February 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, and 16, 1966. BART's general manager accused the paper of attempting to commit "project assassination." The paper also ran feature articles showing how housing needs could be met by building over the freeways.
84.
"Both Needed Board Told: New Freeway Plans," San Francisco Chronicle, February 15, 1966, 1. It is not clear why longtime supervisor Clarissa McMahon, a steadfast freeway opponent, resigned abruptly two weeks before the final freeway vote. Mayor Shelley immediately replaced her with basketball star Kevin O'Shea, a strong backer of freeways.
85.
Mel Wax , "A Waste of Time-Blake. New Freeway Huddle," San Francisco Chronicle, November 19, 1965, 2; San Francisco Chronicle, November 25, 30, 1965.
86.
"The Crucial Vote on Freeways," San Francisco Examiner, February 25, 1966; Russ Cone, "Committee 2 to 1 for Both Freeways," San Francisco Examiner, February 25, 1966, 10; San Francisco Chronicle, February 27, 28, 1966; "Courtesy Wins over a Myth," San Francisco Chronicle, March 2, 1966; Mel Wax, "Spreading Impact of Freeway Vote Delay," San Francisco Chronicle, March 2, 1966, 4. Supervisor Joseph Casey cast the deciding vote approving the delay for Blake.
87.
Board of Supervisors Resolution Number 91-363-5, March 21, 1966. Two weeks after the vote, the Board of Supervisors endorsed the switch to Los Angeles, permanently forgoing some $200 million in federal aid. Of the city's interstate funds, $80 million was transferred to the Southern Freeway, a state highway through the city's industrial district that became the new I-280. San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 1966.
88.
Richard O. Baumbach and William E. Borah, The Second Battle of New Orleans: A History of the Vieux Carré Riverfront-Expressway Controversy (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1981), 76, 85, 89; Lupo, Colcord, and Fowler, Rites of Way, 16-21; Judson Gooding, "How Baltimore Tamed the Highway Monster," Fortune 81 (February 1970): 152. Many accounts also describe stepped-up contacts among antifreeway groups as well as the active engagement of the American Institute of Architects.
89.
For efforts that focused on contractor corruption, see Richard F. Weingroff, "The Battle of Its Life" Public Roads 69, no. 6 (2006). Many have argued that the requirements for comprehensive planning in the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1962 were co-opted by highway interests. See Thomas A. Moorehouse, "The 1962 Highway Act: A Study in Artful Interpretation," Journal of the American Institute of Planners 35 (1969); and Lupo, Colcord, and Fowler, Rites of Way, 188-91. On the efforts to provide compensation for people and businesses in the way, see Mohl, The Interstates and the Cities, 248-50.
90.
Federal Aid Highway Act of 1966, §138 (Public Law 89-574); Department of Transportation Act of 1966 §4(f) (Public Law 89-670). Both bills became law in October 1966. Baumbach and Borah report a "national outcry" on Capitol Hill that spring, with congressmen and senators condemning the highway bureaucracy for "incalculable damage" and "planned destruction of historical or areas of beauty . . . rural as well as urban"; The Second Battle of New Orleans, 106.
91.
The Johnson administration was also seeking cutbacks in highway spending as part of a general effort to cool inflation. See Weingroff, "The Battle of Its Life." Lowell Bridwell, the new federal highway administrator, had been Alan Boyd's deputy in the Department of Commerce. Boyd also chose antihighway activist Peter Craig as assistant general counsel for litigation. See Zachary Schrag, "The Freeway Fight in Washington, D.C.: The Three Sisters Bridge in Three Administrations," Journal of Urban History 30, no. 5 (2004): 656.
92.
Issel, " Land Values, Human Values," 642-43.
93.
Baumbach and Borah, The Second Battle of New Orleans, 146-48.
94.
Schrag, "The Freeway Fight ," 658-61.
95.
Lupo, Colcord, and Fowler, Rites of Way, 17, 41. The quote is from Ben Kelley, The Pavers and the Paved, 71.
96.
Ben Kelley quotes Nixon's chief economic advisor, Paul McCracken, as describing pressure for a highway exemption as coming "more from state highway officials and the highway construction industry than from highway users"; Kelley, The Pavers and the Paved, 83-85; Baumbach and Borah, The Second Battle of New Orleans, 193-97.
