What’s the Deal With I-80 and SF’s Central Freeway? Here’s a Brief History

The health of a major artery in the Bay Area’s freeway system can be measured by the weight of tens of thousands of cars that have shuttled over it daily. Multiply this by nearly 70 years, as in the case of parts of the Central and Bayshore freeways, and history takes a toll.

The long view of road design and what it means today is top of mind for Jason Henderson, geography professor at San Francisco State University, as Caltrans is set to close a critical junction of eastbound Interstate 80 between 17th and Fourth streets and connectors from U.S. Highway 101 beginning Friday night for major repairs.

“With the right messaging, it probably shouldn’t amount to a ‘Carmageddon,’” said Henderson, who has researched the history of the Central Freeway — part of U.S. 101 that connects to I-80 in San Francisco. “In 1996, the Central Freeway was completely shut down for an extended amount of time. There was a tremendous public relations campaign. To the surprise of many, there was a huge diversion of traffic away from the area.”

Speaking with KQED morning host Brian Watt, Henderson described the story of this freeway as the result of not only physical engineering but also years of politically motivated decisions throughout the 20th century.

Here’s an excerpt of their conversation, which is edited for brevity and clarity.

Brian Watt: How much of a big deal is this closure from your vantage point?

Jason Henderson: Yes, if you think about the geography, the 101 is coming up from the south, and it hits a junction with the Bay Bridge viaduct. They come together, and then, there’s the third leg of what’s called the Central Freeway.

It has its name because in the early planning stages for freeways in San Francisco, there was this idea of a central freeway that orbited around the urban core of San Francisco — all these different freeways that were never built.

Let’s get more into this history. How did the Central Freeway get like this in the first place?

As far back as the mid-1930s, the city of San Francisco, with financial support from the Works Progress Administration from the New Deal, had commissioned studies for a network of elevated roadways that would encircle the core of San Francisco.

The Bay Bridge had also been completed by the mid and late ’30s, and it had a touchdown on Fifth [Street] in South of Market, and so there was planning for elevated freeways encircling the core that included using the Bay Bridge viaduct, linking it to the 101.

World War II interrupted all of that conversation, and then after the war, traffic gradually picked up, and pressure for some revisiting this idea of a kind of an elevated, limited-access highway reemerged. There was postwar planning for elevated freeways encircling the core that included using the Bay Bridge viaduct.

And as [this] Central Freeway, which radiated off of that Bay Bridge-101 junction, as it extended into denser residential areas, more politically connected residents and officials began to object. So the freeway made it as far as Turk [Street] and Golden Gate [Avenue]. The original stretches of this were built through industrial areas and residential areas with very little political power at the time.

This is so interesting. What happened in the decades that followed?

The 1956 Interstate Highway Act accelerated funding for highways, so you had a very contentious, almost decadeslong political debate in San Francisco about a network of freeways crisscrossing the city. Much of it was defeated by 1966.

Before that freeway revolt, you just got a notice on the front door that said you have 30 days to leave. And after the freeway revolt, Congress required environmental studies and public meetings for anything that was federally funded.

I imagine that the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 had some real impact, too.

It absolutely did. It led to a whole movement within San Francisco to remove segments of urban freeways that went through dense neighborhoods. We’re talking now about the 1990s, when we had massive highway widenings all over the country.

A protracted battle occurred in San Francisco — the second freeway revolt, if you will — over the Central Freeway and where it would touch down. Eventually, it went to the ballot three times, and in 1999, the prevailing voter sentiment in San Francisco was to remove the Central Freeway somewhere south of Market [Street]. Eventually, we [now] have that Octavia Boulevard and the touchdown of the freeway at Market.

Caltrans says the traffic jams for this closure could be significant. Maybe even a “Carmageddon,” like what happened in Los Angeles in 2011. I was there and covered that.

A lot has changed in terms of automobile patterns since the pandemic. There’s less peak-time weekday car traffic and more both peak and off-peak gig delivery traffic.

We have people who are coming into the city by the thousands to bring things to people, to their door, you know, Amazon, DoorDash. The congestion is not in the downtown core. It is circumventing the downtown core for all kinds of non-work purposes.