By Thomas K. Pendergast
More than 100 people lined the steps in front of City Hall on July 23 to protest against permanently closing the Upper Great Highway for motor vehicle traffic between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard.
A ballot measure is slated to go before San Francisco voters in November which, if passed, would prohibit cars, with a stated goal of ultimately converting the space into an oceanfront park.
In June, San Francisco District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio submitted the ballot measure with the backing of fellow supervisors Myrna Melgar, Dean Preston, Matt Dorsey and Rafael Mandelman just before the deadline for the next election, a move that caught some off guard. Opponents quickly organized to resist closing what they see as a vital north-south traffic artery.
“As a veteran who lives on the south side of the Great Highway, it is my access road to get to the VA Hospital when I need it,” said Leanna Louie, one of the protest organizers. “And it makes a big difference; not having the Great Highway open doubles my time going from my home to the VA Hospital.
“There are many people here who are in professions where they’re required to use the Great Highway,” she said.
Former San Francisco Police Department commander and a fourth-generation San Franciscan who graduated from George Washington High School, Richard Corriea, does not like a few things about the proposed ballot measure, including the timing of when it was submitted.
“It’s sneaky politics to stuff something like this in your desk and take it out on the last possible day for submitting things to the Department of Elections, so that they force us to have things like this so we can talk about it,” Corriea said. “We’re going to continue to talk about it and I can tell you this, the west side is going to be less safe, merchants won’t do as well, and someone needs to pay attention to that.”
But at least one supporter of converting the highway into a park also showed up at the rally.
Lucas Lux, volunteer president of the Friends of Great Highway Park, thinks it is a great idea.
“It’s an incredible, positive opportunity that we should embrace in a city with incredible open spaces,” Lux said. “This is our next opportunity to open the ocean front for people to enjoy in more ways.”
Capt. Sherman Tillman of the San Francisco Fire Department, however, called for a “harmonious coexistence” between cars, bicycles and public transportation, which he says the Upper Great Highway already has as it is now. Tillman stressed that he was only speaking for himself as an individual, not as a representative of the fire department.
“Cars, bicycles and public transportation each serve a vital role in our daily lives,” Tillman said. “Cars provide convenience and flexibility; bicycles offer sustainability and health benefits. And public transportation promotes efficiency and environmental conservation. It is only through the integration and cooperation of all these modes of transportation that we can truly achieve a balanced and harmonious urban ecosystem.
“Now guess what? There’s something like that that already exists; it’s called The Great Highway,” he said. “Two blocks from there, there’s this thing called Golden Gate Park. When you think about urban planning, you have everything at the Great Highway. It’s already there. That is the model for the future.”
“A park isn’t necessary on the west side. It’s needed on maybe the east side,” Lope Yap said at the demonstration. “We already have two great parks: GGNRA (Golden Gate National Recreation Area) and Golden Gate Park.”
But this argument does not sway Lux.
“We have one ocean front. We have zero ocean front parks,” he responded. “Opening the ocean front for people to enjoy is an incredible opportunity and San Franciscans have voted with their feet, that they enjoy an oceanfront promenade.”
Lux cited statistics he said were gathered over the last four years during a “pilot program,” which shut down the highway for the pandemic and then later on weekends only.
“Just simply by closing a gate to cars during this pilot, it has become the City’s third-most-visited park with over 10,000 visits every single weekend. Those are people who could go to Golden Gate Park but they want to enjoy the ocean.”
But Marie Hurabiell thinks the impact of closing the highway to motor vehicles will affect westside residents disproportionately.
“The people who are out there are impacted every day when it is closed,” Hurabiell said. “I don’t think it is fair for us to put this to a vote for the entire City, that is not impacted by this, and put it all on the people who are impacted by it.
“These are people who need to get to work, who need to get their kids to school, who need to get their elderly parents to appointments,” she said. “This isn’t about creating a park, by the way. This is about creating an abandoned road. The legislation only closes the road to cars. It does not create a park.”
But Lux had a different take on that as well.
“Where our City meets the Pacific Ocean is one of the most special places in the City. That space belongs to everybody in the City. Those of us who live close to the ocean are really lucky, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t share it. That is a shared asset for the whole City and the whole City should have a voice in how our sole ocean front is used.”
Corriea said the closure will contribute to congestion of traffic heading south through Golden Gate Park.
“Take a look at Chain of Lakes Drive in Golden Gate Park on closure days on the Great Highway and you’re going to see bumper-to-bumper traffic there,” he said.
Plus it will force traffic off a safe highway and onto side streets.
“It puts cars in the neighborhoods rushing and speeding by on the Lower Great Highway in those outer avenues on the west side, and removes a route for emergency vehicles.
“I can guarantee you, from my 35 years of experience in public safety, that response times for emergency vehicles that are trying to traverse north and south on the west side of the City is increased when the Great Highway is closed. We’re going to guarantee a 24/7 increase by this.”
Lux claims the legislation specifically authorizes emergency vehicles to access the space.
Yet another ongoing issue that might be affected is the homeless population that congregates in RVs along that same stretch of the adjacent Lower Great Highway.
Lux doesn’t think closing down the upper stretch of highway and converting it into a park will attract more homeless to that area.
“I would point to how well our parks are managed throughout the City. We don’t see that problem across all of our parks,” he said.
“As someone who lives in the neighborhood, that has been a problem for decades and people who’ve lived there a long time can tell you that the problem used to be much worse. Today it’s not as bad, but that being said, the main point again is our parks are very well managed. They can handle this.”
Categories: Upper Great Highway
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
Lux and his friends wrote the Great Highway ballot initiative. Of course he likes it. He does not care about other people and their lives. He is pushing his agenda, ridding the city of cars and people who drive them. Lux does not care about the threat to human lives emergency responders are concerned about.
This is tantamount to Wiener’s bill SB 610. He declares that local governments should not be allowed to use fire zone maps or mitigate against the dangers inherent in fire zones. No matter that thousands of people are driving away from fires now. Read about SB 610 here and decide for yourself who to trust with your life. https://marinpost.org/blog/2024/7/31/sb-610-senator-wiener-attacks-fire-hazard-maps-as-impediments-to-housing
These are the people who are trying to control our lives.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Gee whiz…10,000 people use the “promenade” on weekends (a dubious number given how people who live near the GH see people walk back and forth across the counters to jack up the numbers). Maybe during special events there might possibly be that many people but certainly not every day, not at night, not in the rain. Plus 20,000 vehicles use the GH every day (including nights, inclement weather) when it’s not a promenade. That’s twice as many people who use it as a highway than for recreation. And it’s not the “third most visited” park because that statistic refers to only SF Park and Rec controlled parks. More people visit the federally controlled parks including (ta da) Ocean Beach itself which is part of the National Golden Gate Recreation area. Lot of “alternative” facts being thrown around by Lucas Lux. If you want to enjoy the ocean front how about using the beach???
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lux and his crew of deceptive, dismissive and outright rude advocates don’t care that the majority of Sunset and Richmond districts residents don’t want a 24/7 365 days of the year closed to all cars park, built at some point in the future (when there’s funding for it, whenever that might be) on the Great Highway. The Great Highway is a major north/south roadway used by thousands of motorists daily. It is part of the iconic San Francisco 49 mile Scenic Route. This should never have been put on Novembers ballot. How it was done was underhanded. It is hard to understand how without a consensus from all west side residents, Joel E, Lux, London Breed and 4 others supervisors put this measure on Novembers ballot. No petitions were signed. The governmental elite have the authority to do things like this.
Here is a quote from one of the major influencers who is in denial of what closing this Highway will do to our neighborhoods on the western edge of San Francisco, he says, Don’t you know what a gem of a bicycle route this will be!? Miles of car free asphalt along a stretch of Ocean Beach into Golden Gate Park and then through the Panhandle and into the heart of the City!
We don’t need to close an important north/south corridor for automobiles 24/7 365 days just so cyclists can have more car free space to speed past recreating pedestrian’s and not even have the common sense to have a simple bell on their bike to indicate that they are rapidly approaching. Now this is something I would like to see become law. Have a bell on your bicycle and use it to warn pedestrians. It’s dangerous out there with cyclists whizzing by, not slowing down for anyone or anything in their way.
The compromise is the best solution. Weekdays and nights the road is open for automobiles and the east side path (that desperately needs repaving, it hasn’t been repaved in 4 or 5 decades and has a sharp rocky surface and is very bumpy), gets a repaving so people will enjoy recreating on it. Weekends the Highway is closed to auto traffic and open for all to walk, run, ride and have fun events.
If the Great Highway has to be one or the other, completely open to traffic 24/7 365 or closed to traffic 24/7 365( as it will be presented on Novembers ballot), I’ll vote to keep it open to traffic.
There are so many places to enjoy the outdoors on the west side of S.F.. The Great Highway and it’s current recreational paths which are two promenade’s, one that runs along from Lands End to Lincoln and another on the west side of the Great Highway, the path that currently runs the length of the GHWY, the entire length of Ocean Beach, Golden Gate Park, Lake Merced Park, Stern Grove, Lands End, Sutro Park. There is no need to close The Great Highway 24/7 365 days a year.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It is important to note that closing the gates to the Great Highway does not a park make. There are permits to obtain and zoning laws to change and jurisdiction over the road to be established (such as who will clear the sand once the gates are closed and who will patrol the “park”). So far, there is no money in the Rec & Park budget for any of this.
Furthermore, though emergency vehicles will graciously be allowed on the road (thank you so much, Lucas), they will be slowed down considerably by having to stop, exit their vehicles to open the gates, and then maneuver around the “thousands of people” that Lux claims use the roadway. Proponents of the park seem to forget that when it comes to emergencies, time is of the essence. I hope they don’t have to find out the hard way.
Engardio, who is nothing more than a lapdog for Friends of the Park and the Bicycle Coalition, sold out his constituents by sneaking this measure in at the last minute before discussing it with any neighborhood groups or holding any kind of community meetings. But he knew exactly what he was doing. This measure stands a very good change of passing citywide, because all the districts on the east side are hearing is “park”, “park”, “park”. What they are not hearing is the stories of those who have to work and who will be stuck in traffic, adding anywhere from twenty minutes to a half an hour (if not more) to their commute time either way, simply so a privileged few can use the Highway as a playground on a weekday if and when the mood strikes.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Liar liar pants on fire!! Prove that there is 10,000 visitors to the Great Highway every weekend! Your numbers are fake! No matter how many times you lie about it doesn’t make it the truth. However, it can be proved that 17,000 to over 20,000 cars a day use the great highway.
Look at Supervisors failure of a 4th of July parade. ABC 7 news reported several children and adults attended. Not even hundreds! Where were the thousands on this special event?? Watch the news video! There was more people in the marching bands than people watching. Waste of time and money.
HERE IS PROOF THAT THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE GO THE THE HIGHWAY ON WEEKENDS AND NOT EVEN ENGARDIOS PARADE.
https://abc7news.com/post/san-francisco-fourth-july-parade-holiday-tradition-held/15012314/
LikeLike
I have been enjoying the ocean for the fifty years I have lived here. At the north end there is lots of parking and you can walk right onto the beach. You can bike along the great highway and see the ocean. your can drive on 41st avenue, find a parking spot and walk over the dunes to spend a nice time at the beach. It is already a park! with highway open! Atypically myopic suggestion to close the highway, eliminating access for many more thousands than ten.
LikeLiked by 1 person
They don’t care about SF locals, our businesses, our commutes.
They care about Billionaire dark money to push a corrupt national agenda for Billionaire profit, and it obviously doesn’t end at the Great Highway.
LikeLiked by 1 person