Tunnel Tops
Started: 2024-05-29 20:31:44
Submitted: 2024-05-30 21:50:35
Visibility: World-readable
A new park at the edge of the Presidio
In the middle of May I set out to run the Bay to Breakers, as I have done every year for the past several years (excluding two pandemic years in which the race didn't happen). This year I declined to pay an extra $25 for them to send me my bib number in advance, so I had to pick up my bib number at Sports Basement in the Presidio on Saturday afternoon the day before the race.
The Presidio is not the most-connected part of San Francisco by transit (and it's kind of hard to get to via car as well). I drove to Daly City and parked at the BART station, then continued my trip by transit. I stopped by Glen Park to eat a late lunch at La Corneta Taqueria, then rode the rest of the way to Embarcadero Station. Above the station at ground level, around the corner from the California Street cable car stop, in the shadow of the Hyatt Regency on the Embarcadero, I found the bus stop for the free Presidio Go shuttle. Once it arrived it whisked me away across town, driving through the Broadway tunnel (which I may not have driven through before, since I try to avoid getting anywhere near this corner of San Francisco with a car if I can possibly avoid it), then up the straight section of Lombard Street to enter the Presidio itself (where a wide spot in the road currently occupied by a bus stop looked like it might have once been a guard house), before finally depositing me at the transit center next to the main parade ground of the former military base.
From there it was a short walk across one of San Francisco's newest parks, Presidio Tunnel Tops, to the crowded Sports Basement parking lot to pick up my bib number and shirt, before walking along the beach at Crissy Field before turning back to the Tunnel Tops.
I have been informed, by a number of left-leaning pro-transit blogs I've found myself following, that "lidding" freeways is the new hotness in urban design that will address freeway blight across North America. Today I am here to tell you that I have discovered the new standard in freeway lidding, and it is Presidio Tunnel Tops. All new freeway lids will be judged by this park.
US highway 101 runs along the northern edge of the Presidio, connecting San Francisco to the Golden Gate Bridge. When the Presidio was closed as an army base and began to transition into a civilian park on the edge of San Francisco, the highway cut off access between the park and the waterfront. The park is built on top of a tunnel enclosing seven lanes of highway, providing seamless access between the parade ground to Crissy Field. The space itself is divided into sections, with several overlooks providing views of the bay and the bridge, complete with lounging chairs to relax and observe the view.
The middle of the park was a long skinny field stretched above the highway, perched at the new edge of the hill above an embankment above a playground just above Crissy Field. (I did not have any children with me so I did not investigate the playground further.) Along the field are what I think must be benches built for lounging, made out of graceful curves cut into carefully weathered wood now sitting outdoors in the fog. In the picture below I'm standing immediately above the westbound lanes of the highway, but there's no visible sign of the highway from the middle of the park. At either end of the park the highway disappeared and emerged under the park, but it seemed more of a curiosity, as if the entire highway were an afterthought and the park had always been here.
The park, and especially the field, was popular on the cloudy Saturday afternoon. There was some sort of sports event in the field that looked like it had wrapped up the sports event phase and was moving on to the hang out in the park phase. Above the park the ground merged seamlessly with the edge of the main post and onward into the parade ground, with old brick buildings lined up along the grassy field. It was impossible to tell where the tunnel ended and the natural ground began.
The whole park was an amazing achievement in landscape design, turning the empty space above a highway into a new public space.
