We’re about to take a trip up to Oregon, and usually pass through San Francisco to do this. We take 19th Street, go through Golden Gate Park, and so on up to the Golden Gate Bridge. Now I see that the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival will take place in Golden Gate Park on the very day we need to take this route.
Is this going to goof up traffic even very early in the day, do you think? 19th Street is a main drag for travelers going north through the city. Hopefully it isn’t blocked super early in the morning.
If so, we’re going to have to travel up through the east bay to the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge, which I don’t want to have to do. But if we must, we must.
Anybody have any experience about this and can let me know?
19th Avenue (I assume you mean) is a crap shoot on the best of days, with road work and closing the center lane to trim the center strip happening all the time. But by the time you get inside the park, it’s practically a freeway and there is no effective cross traffic to slow you down.
Disclaimer: I don’t go to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, but I do live in San Francisco and unfortunately drive 19th Avenue fairly often. On Friday the festival doesn’t start until 1:00 pm and all the events are to the west of the crossover. If you are through there before 10 am it should be as normal. If you’re going through on Saturday or Sunday, it starts at 11 am, so maybe shoot for earlier (but I’d be more worried about normal weekend traffic going north than the festival anyway).
p.s. thank you for not complaining about how SF doesn’t have any north-south freeway to the GG Bridge.
Thank you for the reply. Maybe we’ll risk the 19th Avenue route if we leave very early.
On weekdays we can travel northwards along the Great Highway next to the ocean, then wend our way through fancy neighborhoods and skirt the Presidio, and eventually end up at the GG bridge. But nowadays the Great Highway is closed on weekends, so since we’re traveling on a Saturday, we have to do 19th Avenue.
No, we don’t gripe about there being no freeway. We’ve lived here too long to do that. But we moved here too late to ever see the Embarcadero Freeway; it was gone before we came to the region. It’s only to be seen if we watch Bullitt.