Editor,
The SF Board of Supervisors and the SFMTA want to go ahead and keep roads closed in Golden Gate Park despite the outcry from disabled and seniors. Why are we always the ignored demographic? Those folks will be in our shoes one day and they’ll shake their heads and say “what were we thinking?”. In the meantime, those of us with mobility issues, most of whom have paid taxes in this City for most of our long lives are denied access to museums and the Conservatory because the able-bodied youngsters who run the City refuse to hear our voices and respect our needs!
Dawn Griffin
Categories: letter to the editor
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
I am 74. I will never play the so called Senior card to further my personal needs. I am totally in support of JFK Drive being permanently closed to cars. The incessant drumbeat of people who feel aggrieved needs to be addressed. There are plenty of options to access the museums. The people who are put out know this full well. Not once do I hear about the rights of children. Not once do I hear about the rights of all people to have an unencumbered recreation space devoid of cars. Prior to the implementation of 1.5 miles of JFK Drive it was a parking lot. If there is one positive to come out of the awful Pandemic it is the undeniable fact that San Francisco is realizing that cars don’t rule the world. San Francisco is going to show some leadership in this era of climate change and environmental damage.
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Im 78 and disabled. Ive written off every going to GGP again if they permanently close JFK because I cannot walk into the park or walk long distances . This city has been taken over by the ableist bike lobby and some Supes and city agencies are all too happy to further their selfish entitled agenda. Same situation on the GH. No care or compassion for anyonbe who isnt young healthy, and able bodied. Your day will come, you selfish brats on bikes.
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I am 74. That’s right. I am the staunchest advocate for a permanently car free JFK Drive and Great Walkway. If that makes me a “Brat” I will wear the label with pride and stand for the future.
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Actually rabid bike advocates are the best recruiter for opposition that one could envision. I include in addition to the first commenter the “civil disobedience” group in that group who are obstructing cars on the GH when it is open to cars which is a demonstration of their “no compromise” attitude. Every time that happens there is a surge of signatures on the change.org petition to Open the Great Highway which now has over 14,000 signatures and is capable of organizing opposition to re-closure. In the Sunset District according to the D4 mobility studies, only 10% of Sunset residents use bicycles as their primary form of transportation. There are many many reasons why people choose cars over bikes or Muni (their job requires equipment, has an irregular schedule making muni or carpooling or biking unsafe or unfeasible, the unreliability, inaccessibility and fear of infection and crime while using Muni, their chores/tasks require many stops and heavy loads.) If someone chooses to adopt a bicycle only lifestyle, that’s fine. But when they proselytize over and over again that EVERYONE should adopt that lifestyle and we should be closing city streets for their exclusive use, then it crosses a line and people need to actively resist it.
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You could not have typed that with a straight face. Seniors, especially retired, bored, busybody types, have an outsized input on our politics. One minor concession and this is how you react?
The old adage of “with age comes wisdom” has been torpedo’d by our current crop of elders.
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No, the outsized influence on local politics is the ageist, arrogant, entitled bike coalition. Youll be old or disabled someday, and then you will understand the discrimination against those 2 groups.
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I TOTALLY AGREE with Marc Maloney. I am 74. I cycle, run and have only owned a car for one year in the sixties. The Entitled attitude of my so called peers disappoints me. Just because of age doesn’t mean we, including me, have to accommodate their every whim.
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Im happy for you that you are a vigorous and healthy in your seventies. However, its only when you become disabled and or older that u realize the ADA laws were a great start but dont go far enough. Speaking of officials obeying every whim, I give you the illegal, entitled, arrogant temper tantrums of the bike lobby on th GH, holding working class commuters hostage and imprisoning
them them on a road with no exit, causing dangerous delays and misery. This “whim” is tolerated and thereby encouraged by the mayor and Sup Mar, other elected officials, and the sfpd. It is an insult to all. Calling these childish acts civil disobedience makes a mockery the suffering of those protesting during the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-Vietnam War protests. There is no injustice here. Its just spoiled entitled adults who want a needed four lane highway for their exclusive use.
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Help me here. What do the anti-Vietnam war cadres have to do with exercising a legal right to cycle on The Great Walkway? I have yet to see a Bikes Banned sign. Though this is what The Baby Boomers who have forgotten the ’60s would like. Get in that little GTO and cruise down the Stairway to Heaven
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They have a legal right to use the highway keeping to the right of the road and not obstructing traffic by traveling significantly below the posted speed limit. The current behavior of taking all lanes and refusing police orders to move to the right is NOT legal and is deliberately provocative and disruptive. A dozen cyclists disrupting traffic along the GH for up to an hour and causing hundreds of motorists from getting to their destinations on time. Look up CVC 21202. So more misinformation from you like much of what you post. Do you see motorists deliberately keeping recreational users from using the GH on the weekends? No. Do you see these extreme bicyclists keeping motorists from using the GH during the weekdays? Yes.
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