Intersection reflection in 37 seconds

The intersection is bristling with traffic lights -- 16 of them altogether.

You are traveling northbound on 19th during the day, and the six traffic lights facing you turn red. If you happen to stop, the street immediately fills with pedestrians.

They hurry across the street, in a crosswalk wider than an automobile. Mostly, they are coming from or going to the elevated platform that rises between the six lanes of this wanna-be freeway.

The open-air platform is flanked by rusting rails and overhead electrical cables for MUNI trains, and is topped by an undulating roof of steel. The roof exhibits the green patina of oxidized copper, giving it the illusion of age.

Actually, it was built quite recently. While the platform was under construction last October, a car speeding in the same direction you are now traveling somehow lost control and plowed into a crowd of people waiting for the northbound bus. Fourteen were hospitalized.

Those people got off easy compared to Petrel Eugene W. Chan, who was killed three months before that accident in a hit-and-run involving a 4x4 pickup truck.

People catch four different northbound busses at the stop, just across the street on your right-hand side. All that stands between you and those waiting there now are some flimsy newspaper boxes and a garbage can.

To the right, Holloway climbs gently eastward into a residential area. Single-family pastel houses face white picket fences and streets lined with parked cars.

Last week, a Subaru station wagon coming down the hill on Holloway was struck in the intersection by an out of control Honda CRX. The CRX was out of control because its driver came through the red light you are now waiting for at 65 mph. The CRX was broadsided by a Toyota Corolla.

At that point, the driver of the CRX was no longer part of the decision-making process, at least in terms of where his car and its three passengers were going next.

With a glance to your left, the source of all this human activity becomes apparent. "San Francisco State University," proclaim the brass letters on a mausoleum-like slab of concrete that sprouts from a patch of flowers. 27,000 students are enrolled in this dense urban campus, of which you can only see the eastern edge.

Down Holloway to the west, motorcycles are parked side by side like mothballed aircraft. This is a commuter campus, on the outskirts of The City.

Most nights, a motorcycle with a rider astride will be there too -- a traffic cop, waiting for you to run the light.

Tonight, the police are elsewhere. Cars charge up Holloway and race into the intersection, tires squealing as they thread their way through the pedestrians in the crosswalk and make the left turn up 19th.

Where does this road lead, that people are so impatient to get on it?

The light turns green. You put your foot on the accelerator. You have been waiting 37 seconds.

[ Golden Gater Online October 3, 1995 ]

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