Reckless Driving at Ocean Beach Parking Lot

When I have to drive my car to work, I normally drive downhill going past the historic Cliff House and along Great Highway (southbound), and always pass by the large parking lots for the people wanting to enjoy the beach. The segment I am talking about today is the Ocean Beach/Great Highway parking lot nearest to Balboa & Great Highway.

One of the issues I regularly see is when drivers decide to skip the stop sign at Balboa by taking the turn-off before Balboa to enter the parking lot, drive straight through at full speed (speed limit on Great Highway is 35) and take the parking lot exit that continues along southbound Great Highway (basically, taking an illegal shortcut).

If you remember your driver's education, driving in a parking lot is limited to 10 MPH (please correct me if I'm wrong) and that's because of many people walking around the lot loading and unloading their cars, and the risk of vehicles slowly backing out of their space.

By speeding in a parking lot, and using it as a shortcut to avoid skipping the stop sign at Balboa, it could be considered reckless driving as defined by the California Vehicle code, section 23103(b):

"(b) A person who drives a vehicle in an offstreet parking facility, as defined in subdivision (c) of Section 12500, in willful or wanton disregard for the safety of persons or property is guilty of reckless driving."

Something needs to be done to stop people from taking this shortcut, and the possible risk of a person getting hit and killed or getting into a car wreck. Since the lot seriously needs new parking stall stripes, can they also install some speed bumps?

To make it visually understanding of what I'm talking about, I've used Google's street view to help me out:

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This is the entrance to the parking lot if a driver is going southbound and just recently passed the Cliff House. I see drivers decide to cut through the parking lot at this point to avoid the stop sign at Balboa (below).


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This is the stop sign location at Balboa & Great Highway. Since there is nothing ordering drivers to stop if they drive in the parking lot, they just go full speed just to save themselves a few seconds.


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The blue car in the middle is yielding to approaching traffic. Many who decide to shortcut just bolts right through if there's light traffic and gets away with it.

Outside Lands FAIL: Shutting down Ocean Beach parking lot WITHOUT NOTICE

On my regular commute on the Great Highway to work this morning, I noticed the Ocean Beach parking lot between Fulton and Lincoln was fenced off this morning all lot entry points.

As usual, last night, the Federal Park Police and National Park Rangers were out in force to kick-out all people parked at the beach lot at 11PM, but these temporary barricades were up sometime between 11PM and 8AM blocking all access to parking.

The barricades were not placed by SFPD, in fact, they looked like they were rented from some event company.

The phone call:
I called the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) this morning to find-out why the lot was closed, assuming the lot was owned by the federal government because the federal government police officers are enforcing the late night no-parking policy.

After waiting about 15 minutes for a reply, I was informed the lot was owned by the city, but he explained to me the lot closure was for Outside Lands. The closure is from Thursday to Tuesday.

While nothing against the GGNRA, I explained to him that there was no notice given of a lot closure because that would tick-off all the surfers and the frequent tour buses that pull-over for their break and let the visitors go to the Beach Chalet. GGNRA's policy for their lots (such as Land's End/USS San Francisco Memorial lot) is to give at least a week's notice.

Basically, there's two FAILS:

1. San Francisco Government (in particular, SFPD, DPT, and the Golden Gate Park management) for failure to place notices of a city owned parking lot closure.
2. Outside Lands for not mentioning this in their "311" page and letter to neighborhood residents.

What a great start... piss off the surfers!