The Bay Area is a cradle of environmentalism and a region with a rich trove of health and medical research and resources. In this blog, we’ll report on the deepening understanding of how the places we inhabit and the lifestyles we adopt contribute to our own health and the health of our communities.
To promote public transit throughout the city, park officials hope the free shuttle will encourage visitors to ditch the car this spring when heading to Golden Gate Park.
The shuttle will be free to all residents and visitors with stops at Golden Gate Park destinations, including McLaren Lodge, the National AIDS Memorial Grove, the Koret Children's Quarter Playground, the Conservatory of Flowers, the de Young Museum, the California Academy of Sciences, Stow Lake, the bison paddock and the park's two windmills and paths to Ocean Beach on its western edge.
The shuttles will run between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. every 15 to 20 minutes on Saturdays and Sundays and on city holidays.
© The Bay Citizen, 2012
Helene Gelber-Lehman
If only the transit system in Contra Costa county would care as much to provide even paid transportation between east Contra Costa county to Central and West county, the Bay Area might actually become "livable".
For instance, to use public transit to get from Antioch to the Sun Valley Mall in Concord could take more than 2 hours when it is a 15 minute drive. When will transit system CEO's and our legislators wake up to the reality that they are: a) driving property values down in places where public transportation is either unavailable or pathetically inadequate and/or ill-designed; b) causing excess pollution because of the dis-incentives to use pathetic mass transit; c) causing unnecessary traffic jams and d) most importantly, isolating and discriminating against seniors and people who are economically challenged and/or who can't drive for whatever reasons, by failing to provide adequate, proper and effective bus service to our citizens? We would gladly pay for proper and effective mass transit, but NO ONE IN GOVERNMENT OR "TRANSIT WORLD" IS LISTENING!
SF Ocean Edge
The Shuttle is a great idea -- while you are riding around the Park, come out to the western edge and enjoy nature and wildlife while you still have the opportunity, because changes are being proposed that will destroy much of what is there.
If you go to the Murphy Windmill or the Beach Chalet, take a stroll on the old railroad path that links the two. On the east side of the path, you will see the Beach Chalet soccer fields -- a meadow that is used for practice games. Sadly, this meadow may soon be lost as parkland and habitat, and become a limited-use area.
The proposed Beach Chalet Athletic Fields project will remove over seven acres of grass and topsoil and replace it with the over seven acres of artificial turf – a gravel base, plastic carpet and tire waste or other infill. The Audubon Society has described this as the environmental equivalent of replacing a meadow with a seven-acre asphalt parking lot. The project will also add more concrete and asphalt paving to the area, increasing the parking lot by 35%, contrary to San Francisco’s policy of being a transit-first City.
You might want to plan your trip to arrive near sunset, so that you can enjoy the beauty of the fading light and darkening sky before the proposed stadium lighting is installed. That is because the soccer complex project will install 10 banks of lights, 60 feet tall, resulting in 150,000 watts of sports lighting. These lights will be taller than the trees that separate the fields from the Great Highway and Ocean Beach. The lights will be turned on from dusk to 10:00 p.m., 365 days of the year. In additional to detracting from the beauty of the area, night lighting is damaging to wildlife, affecting migration, foraging, and nesting patterns.
Golden Gate Park's meadows are a rich, living environment for many species. That is why the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society are fighting to protect the Beach Chalet Athletic Fields. For the Draft Environmental Impact Report, Audubon submitted a list of over 64 birds that have been seen by just one volunteer at the Beach Chalet Fields.
It is exciting to go out there and see the hawks or the herons hunting; many smaller birds also feed on the fields; during stormy weather, shore birds come in. But artificial turf is dead -- it does not provide habitat for birds. And on top of that, the 60 foot sports lights will have an additional negative impact on the habitat for most birds and other wildlife.
One reads a lot of articles about how great San Francisco is doing with environmental policies. When it comes to protecting this habitat area, the City is turning its back on it.
SF Ocean Edge supports renovating the Beach Chalet fields with natural grass and no lights. The balance of the funding should be used to fix up other playing fields in San Francisco. Please contact Mayor Lee and the Board of Supervisors and ask them to support natural grass and NO stadium lights in Golden Gate Park.
Please go to our website for more information - www.sfoceanedge.org .