By Thomas K. Pendergast
This November, city voters may decide if the Upper Great Highway between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard will be closed permanently and replaced with an oceanfront park, although opposition to the ballot measure is already forming.
On June 18, SF Board of Supervisors members Joel Engardio, Myrna Melgar, Dean Preston, Matt Dorsey and Rafael Mandelman submitted a ballot measure asking voters to approve turning the two-mile stretch of Ocean Beach from a highway into parkland “to address effects of pollution and climate change on the City’s coastal ecosystem,” according to a press release by an organization called Friends of Great Highway Park, which, along with other groups, is pushing for the change.
Engardio, whose district borders this stretch of Great Highway, addressed the fact that the “pilot program” of closing the highway from Friday afternoons through the weekend until Monday mornings, when it opens up for motor vehicle traffic again, is set to end next year.
“As the deadline approaches, the fight between pro-highway and pro-park advocates will only intensify,” Engardio said in a separate statement. “That’s why we need to decide once and for all if the Great Highway is going to be a park or not. We’re asking a momentous question: ‘Should a coastal highway remain what it was the past century or should it become something new for the next 100 years?’ A decision of this magnitude deserves to be made directly by voters.”
Engardio explained that the next scheduled election after November is in June of 2026.
“By then. The pilot weekend road closure will be over,” he said. “That means the decision over the Great Highway will be in the hands of the Board of Supervisors and the mayor in 2025. If voters want to directly determine what happens to the Great Highway, they need to do it this November.”
Other groups supporting the idea include the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.
“It’s very clear to all of us that the measure aligns with our goal of achieving a citywide network of car-free and people-prioritized corridors,” said Roan Kattouw, president of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Board. “The City’s oceanfront should be accessible to people to enjoy, not handed over to private vehicles, especially when it costs the city millions each year to keep it free of sand.”
Another group supporting the park concept is Kids Safe SF.
“We’re thrilled to support this measure alongside Friends of Great Highway Park and applaud the supervisors for their leadership and vision for the future of San Francisco’s public spaces,” the organization states on its website. “San Francisco kids and families deserve easy access to safe open spaces for recreation across the City, from Ocean Beach to downtown.”
But not everyone is on board with the proposal, like District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan who represents the Richmond and opposes it in its current form.
Instead, she supports an alternative plan that, so far, is not going before the voters in November. This plan would keep the eastern stretch of the highway, turning it instead into a two-lane roadway, while allowing for the western stretch to become parkland.
“The Great Highway serves as a vital north-south connector for the west side, providing access to and from the Richmond District for residents and visitors alike,” Chan said. “Based on the Ocean Beach Master Plan of 2012 and a SF County Transportation Authority Great Highway study released in 2021, there is a way we can provide both open space and maintain road access. And I supported such a concept then and I still do now.”
And locals in both the Sunset and Richmond districts are also organizing on social media like NextDoor and Facebook to fight the closure of the upper Great Highway.
“The people who need that highway are the working people who commute,” said Alyse Ceirante, who lives in the Outer Sunset about three blocks from the ocean. “All these working people are being asked to do this but they’re not going to be able to use the park during the week because they’re at work.
“So, it’s a very elitist group of people who can do this,” Ceirante said. “And so, we’re closing the park for these people, most of them have money, most of them have extremely expensive bikes, they have their spandex and they’re really the driving force behind this.”
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) plans to divert cars to Sunset Boulevard and smooth the traffic flow along both Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard by replacing stop signs with traffic signals.
Patricia Arack is 81 years old and has lived in the Outer Sunset for 40 years. Although she no longer drives, she’s skeptical that either Sunset Boulevard or 19th Avenue are adequate to handle the extra traffic.
“It’s going to be a disaster for people who live out here in the Sunset because the traffic is going to be horrendous,” Arack said. “19th Avenue and Sunset Boulevard are already overloaded with cars. The traffic is not going to go away. It’s just going to be more horrendous in the avenues because people will continue to drive down the Lower Great Highway.”
Supporters of the ballot measure claim that closing the highway removes pollution from non-exhaust sources like brakes and tires that contributes to ocean pollution.
But Arack believes it will not cut down on air pollution.
“The pollution is unbelievable on the Lower Great Highway, when the highway’s closed and we get that commute traffic on Friday afternoon. I can’t open windows because the pollution’s so bad from the automobile exhaust,” she said. “They always say ‘this is going to be good for the environment’. No it’s not. The cars are still going to be spewing out pollution but now they’re going to be doing it in front of people’s houses and into their lungs.”
Camila Kolseth lives in the Sutro Heights neighborhood of the Outer Richmond District. Both she and her husband frequently commute down to the peninsula.
“The Great Highway is really a main artery for those of us who live in the neighborhoods,” Kolseth said.
While putting it to a citywide vote might seem fair, she thinks it’s not for the people who have to live with the results.
“It’s a local issue. It’s not a citywide issue. People in other parts of the City don’t understand the dynamics of the neighborhood and will think it’s just great,” she said.
“I think we have plenty of parks in this area already. We have Sutro Park, Land’s End trail, Golden Gate Park and the entire beach.”
Peggy Barry has lived in the Outer Richmond for 40 years. She’s in her 70s now and does not drive anymore.
“The more you guys cut off access, the less I see friends and people that want to visit. It feels very isolating. We need more access, not less,” Barry said.
“You’re putting it to a vote for all the people that are not on the west side as well and that is a majority of the people. The other side has more people,” she said.
“We are not the bike coalition. We don’t have a lot of money. We are not organized, just a bunch of neighbors calling each other on NextDoor. We’re so outnumbered in terms of money and people. And I think that’s unfair,” Barry said.
Categories: Upper Great Highway
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
I agree with Ms. Kolseth…This should not be a citywide issue. For all the reasons she she stated.
I disagree with Connie Chan’s alternative of split lanes with the autos being on the East lanes of The Great Highway. They should. be on the West ocean side of the road because that 2 miles is part of the SF 49 Mile Scenic Drive which I believe has been established for over 70 years.. Keyword “DRIVE”. How can the beauty of that 2 miles be seen from the Eastern inside lanes?
And as for the expense of clearing the sand. The sand will still have to be cleared just as often or a park will become a sand dune. So don’t let that be an argument for closing the highway.
“Share the Road” like what was always done before Covid. Use the raised pathways for walking. Use Golden Gate Park which is only 1 block away and the road parallel to Lincoln is already closed!
The Great Highway needs to reopen just as it is.
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This article is extremely misleading. The writer and many of the groups interviewed talk as if the park is a done deal should this measure pass in November. Nothing could be further from the truth. I encourage everyone to actually read the measure submitted to the Department of Elections by Engardio, et al. There is nothing in the language of that measure that either mandates or guarantees that the Great Highway will become a park should the measure pass. Boiled down to its essence, all the measure is asking voters to decide is, simply, “Should the Great Highway be closed to cars?”. Nothing more, and nothing less. There is no discussion as to how this park will be funded. There is no discussion as to who will clear the sand (DPW has strong argument against continuing to do this, as it will no longer be a street). There is no discussion of how emergency vehicles will enter (when it comes to surf rescues, time is of the essence). There is no discussion of an alternative evacuation route for those in the Richmond or on the Peninsula should the need arise (again, time is of the essence). If the measure passes, all we are likely to gain from it is an empty highway covered with sand and of use to no one, while tens of thousands of cars wind their way through the the quiet little neighborhoods of the Sunset, causing nothing but disruption while endangering pedestrians and children playing outside.
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The current Great Highway is among if not the safest thoroughfare in all of SF.
Billionaire-backed non-profit carpetbaggers from NYC who don’t live in the district and rarely if ever visit want to use this as a political football for their agenda, which has nothing whatsoever to do with actually combating climate change or reducing the need for vehicular travel in CA, nor “preserving biodiversity” as Jen Nossokoff tried to pretend.
Instead, it will force tens of thousands more commuters’ vehicles daily down dense, narrow residential streets with few traffic controls, (mostly routinely ignored stop signs), right through several dozen daycares and pre-schools and schools. By contrast, the Highway is clearly much safer for all involved. It’s also fully accessible to all walkers, runners, bicyclists, and anything else you want to do, right now.
These are the people who wanted to use the deaths of a family of 4 at a bus stop in West Portal for their unrelated agenda, which is decidedly not actual public safety for SF commuters. It’s about a political agenda pushed by shameless propagandists pretending to be locals by putting “SF” in their *(for-private-profit) 501c3’s title. Locals don’t fall for this crap, but the transplants outnumber us. We need to get organized against these parasites before the host is fully dead.
Fire Breed. Fire Engardio. Stop the political graft and waste of public resources. Don’t elect Billionaires’ pawns or paid real estate liars. RECLAIM SF FOR LOCALS.
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It’d be fine to close, but only there’s some kind of optimized flow through the park towards Sunset along with properly timed lights. They haven’t done so, and it’s terribly slow crossing golden gate park in addition to Sunset being slow both ways (with road work near Sloat recently too).
I’d vote for the closure but not before they did something about that first. It’s quicker to go to San Rafael than it is Daly City on the weekends.
The other points are totally valid – there will be no real savings on sand clearing because nobody is going to want a sand dune for a park. Keeping two split lanes on half would also be fine.
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