Attention all Uber X and Lyft drivers, their passengers, and all those of you who own cars and are going to try to use Van Ness or Franklin to get yourselves to the Marina, Golden Gate Bridge, or North Beach this weekend: You are going to be sitting in awful traffic.
The first of three weekend-long closures of Van Ness Avenue is happening this weekend, from early Friday straight through until midnight on Sunday night, in order to start construction on an under-street pedestrian tunnel that's being built to service the new California Pacific Medical Center campus that's under construction. The tunnel will connect the huge new hospital at Van Ness and Geary slated for completion in 2019 with the separate medical office building going in across Van Ness.
That means that Van Ness will be shut down in both directions between Geary and Post all day Friday and throughout the weekend, with traffic diverted onto Franklin, Gough, and Larkin. In other words, it'll be a mess.
The next closure, as the Chronicle reports, will happen the weekend of April 24, and last all weekend. Then they'll be shutting Van Ness down again all of Labor Day weekend, from September 5 to 7.
Good luck with all that.