Don't Cut Off Bayview for Two Years

Dear Supervisor Walton and Mayor Lurie, As a Bayview-Hunters Point resident, I urge you to intervene in the current plan for the Islais Creek Bridge replacement project before it is too late. I support replacing the bridge. It needs to be done. But the plan as it stands would completely sever Third Street — our neighborhood's main artery — for at least two years. No vehicles. No T-Third light rail. Just a bus, with no guarantee that it will show up when we need it and as often as we need it. Not to mention this bus will join all the other car and industrial cargo traffic that will be re-routed through an already congested Illinois St bridge. I need you to understand what this means for our community. We depend on the T-Third to get downtown, to work, to doctor's appointments. The businesses on Third Street — many of them Black- and Latino-owned, many still recovering from COVID — will lose two years of access to customers. Some will not survive it. These are not abstract economic statistics. These are the restaurants, the barbershops, the community anchors that make Bayview what it is. And this is happening in a neighborhood that already carries more than its share. The Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund site sits blocks away. Our community has been promised cleanup, investment, and equity for decades. What we have received, too often, is disruption and delay. This bridge project, as currently planned, continues that pattern. I voted for you because I believed you would fight for neighborhoods like mine. Please prove me right. Respectfully, Your Name Resident of Your ZIP