By Thomas K. Pendergast
The debate over the fate of the Upper Great Highway (UGH) between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard continues, with public radio station KALW recently hosting a forum on Aug. 20 at its downtown studio about Proposition K, a November ballot measure to permanently ban private motor vehicle traffic with the expectation of eventually turning it into an oceanfront park.
District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, who put the measure on the ballot, as well as Lucas Lux, president of the Friends of Great Highway Park, were there to argue in favor of it and District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan, along with former SFPD Commander Richard Corriea, argued against it.
The proposition follows a decision by the SF Board of Supervisors to close the Great Highway extension south of Sloat to Skyline Boulevard because of severe erosion and the threat this poses to an adjacent sewage treatment plant.
“The Great Highway has lost its greatest utility as a direct connection to Daly City, so now we have to decide what’s the best use of the section between Lincoln and Sloat, which doesn’t have any on and off ramps for cars,” Engardio said. “So, turning this section into a park is what is being proposed. The Great Highway between the Richmond District and Lincoln will remain open to cars 24/7 for access to the Sunset District, just as it always has, that’s what’s staying the same.”
“I do not support a winner-take-all approach and that is what Proposition K is about,” Chan responded. “The way that I see Prop. K is a divisive approach to a land use issue. What we need to do and ought to do is to – through a legislative process, a public process – to actually have input about what do with that space.”
Chan said there is already a 2021 study which includes a compromise design, with a promenade that will allow recreation, as well as a two-direction, two-lane roadway for motor vehicles.
“That’s something that can be done,” she said. “We know that it can be done, so why not do that? Because that actually brings people together. We meet all the needs. We meet all the demands so that we don’t have to divide our communities.”
Lux lives in the Outer Sunset, not far from the highway.
“I live in a neighborhood that used to be full of community spaces like Fleishhacker Pool; there was a skating rink down the street from my house, there was Playland (at-the-Beach) up the road. I didn’t get to experience all that. I live in a neighborhood where none of that’s there,” Lux said. “And when the Great Highway opened as a community space that completely changed my family’s life and the lives of many of the neighbors that we know.
“And so, when we think about community impact for this space, the people in the Outer Sunset have the most to gain. We’re going to live next to the City’s most amazing park spaces,” he said. “And when we think about the impact on our businesses, imagine all those people coming to those businesses who’ve never been to the Outer Sunset before.
“And then think about the flip side. What utility does the Great Highway serve for merchants? For the merchants in my neighborhood, you can’t get on and off the Great Highway in my neighborhood. The only shopping that the Great Highway facilitates is people in the Outer Richmond getting to big-box stores (in Daly City).”
Corriea rejects the idea that the utility of this section of the UGH would necessarily be compromised. He said that since 2021, when the compromise plan went into effect, motor vehicle traffic has increased along that stretch of road, not decreased.
He also mentioned that the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is looking at changing the intersection of Sloat and Skyline boulevards to make traffic flow better around the Zoo. If that happens, it will make going from the UGH via Sloat to Skyline and then into Daly City (or the reverse) easier than it is now.
Engardio admitted that this was essentially the choice voters will be making in November.
“So, that’s the way it will be if Prop. K fails,” Engardio said. “If Prop. K passes then we can turn left at Lincoln instead and then … go down Lincoln and take Sunset down to the same spot you would end up at had you turned left at Sloat.
“So, that’s the question: By turning left at Sloat, we don’t get a park. By turning left at Lincoln, we get a park. There’s tremendous potential benefit to a park and we can still get where we need to go by turning left at Lincoln, then it’s a win-win.”
Lux agreed.
“What we’re debating tonight are two routes you could take, Lincoln or Sloat, that if you put them on a map, you create a rectangle,” Lux said. “This entire debate is which side of the rectangle are we driving on. The trip-time impact is minimal. So why not lean into this opportunity to create an oceanfront park for everyone and have a pretty similar commute from what we have today.”
But it is the commute we have today that Chan is not happy about. And she’s not sure how accurate the statistics are which give an average increase in drive time of about three minutes from the Richmond District to Daly City when the UGH is closed.
“During the pandemic my mom was sick at UCSF Parnassus. And I had to drive from the Outer Richmond to Parnassus and really use Chain-of-Lakes (Drive),” Chan said. “And even though the three minutes isn’t always the case because if there’s 19th Avenue construction or even as just recently with the Golden Gate Park concerts, that, if you have experience, is real traffic congestion and it was difficult for me every day to visit my mom while she was getting her pancreatic cancer treatment.”
Lux countered that the statistics are reliable.
“We’ve had years of data. Multiple transportation agencies have studied this, and they have concluded what we all knew all along the way,” he said. “The Great Highway closes all the time because of sand, so we have real-time data on what happens to all the trips that rely on the Great Highway to get from the Outer Richmond to Daly City.”
Engardio says that Chan’s preferred compromise would be the most expensive compared to the other options, however, Chan countered that while it’s true her plan would cost $30 million to fully implement, there is no study about the cost of a fully built-out park.
“We don’t actually know how much it will cost to establish the park. We don’t know how much it will cost to fix the traffic lights and calming for Lincoln Way. We actually don’t know a lot of things about how much it will cost,” Chan said.
She then read the city controller’s statement about Prop. K.
“‘This ordinance cannot bind future mayors or Board of Supervisors to provide funding for this or any other purpose.’ It actually also means there’s no commitment about how much money is going to be spent.
“Even though it says there will be a cost savings because now you will not have to maintain the road, because you have closed the road, but if there’s a park it will require maintenance, doesn’t it? So, at the end of the day, cost is an issue for us.”
Categories: Upper Great Highway
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
I agree with Connie Chan that proposition K is not well thought out. Building and maintaining a usable parkland on GH will be expensive.
A compromise like what she suggests will give time for more study and perhaps building an alternative road that does not so heavily impact house owners next to the GH. Closure on weekends as it now still gives most people a chance to enjoy the ocean.
I grew up in inner Richmond and there is a so much worse congestion on Stanyan. This was caused by closing the one alternate route inside the park for traffic to get to the Sunset or the bridge. Keeping that open would have kept congestion down as well as lower pollution from idling cars. That closure was also not well thought out.
This should not be a winner take all situation. Each side can give a little so we all win. That is the spirit of democracy.
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I grew up in the Inner Richmond too. I deplore the loss of public transit lines which once criss-crossed the streets of my neighborhood. As a child, I took the streetcar from Cornwall & 2nd Ave, 1/2 block from my house at California & 2nd Ave, all the way to The White House or the Big E downtown. At the age of 5, I learned how to hop onto a moving turnstile and clamor onto an outdoor seat of this moving monster, hanging onto a pole for dear life as it rattled and jostled us along the tracks. We weren’t driven to our destinations by our parents. If this person is lamenting they can no longer use beautiful Golden Gate Park as a cut-through for their climate killing car, I say do things the way we used to when I was a kid. Hop on public transit, take a walk through the park to get to the Sunset, get out of your car, and respect the Park for what it is. A Nature preserve, not a freeway.
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Let me guess, you don’t commute to a job on the peninsula or in the north bay and you don’t know anyone who does.
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Come on, enough already. OPEN THE GREAT HIGHWAY!
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An extensive (212 page) Ocean Beach Master Plan was created by SPUR with all agencies and stakeholders at the table starting in 2010 and distributed in May 2012. Many of the proposed phases and steps recommended have already been implemented.
Recommendations for what is referred in the report as “The Middle Reach,” meaning The Great Highway from Lincoln to Sloat, have not been implemented. Here are the recommendations:
“Narrow the Great Highway between Lincoln and Sloat from four lanes to two; include a wide shoulder for cycling and emergency access; use current southbound lanes and median for dune restoration and amenities… Introduce small pockets of parking”
It goes on to say:
“Add traffic-calming and mitigation measures to lessen neighborhood traffic impacts [via spillover affects]. Mitigation measures to prevent aggressive cut-throughs in adjacent neighborhoods (already a problem during frequent road closures) would be essential, as would coordination with ongoing planning for circulation throughout the west side. Comprehensive traffic analysis will be essential to determine if the traffic impacts of this intervention would be justified by the considerable improvements in coastal access.”
In addition it says:
“Joint Open Space Management Agreement – Ocean Beach is experienced as a single place, but its management has long been divided among several entities, resulting in significant public frustration over the most basic needs, such as waste management and restrooms.”
The final SPUR report recommends this:
“Open space planning and programming study > Cost and revenue-sharing framework > Dune restoration pilot study > Schematic design for public access improvements > Management agreement”
If a Joint Open Space planning and program study and Management Agreement exists, I for one would all like to know who heads it, where the Management Agreement between the agencies are, and who heads this collaboration. I say this with some sense of confidence, it is not D-4 supe Joel. He completely ignored these extensively vetted recommendations presented more than a decade ago. So did Mayor Breed, Phil Ginsburg and the Bicycle Coalition, who all support closing the Great Highway.
This is the kind of divisive politics running rampant in our country and is running rampant here too. It needs to stop.
Vote NO on Prop K until the community voices of District 1, 4 and 7 are heard.
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What needs to stop is the gaslighting from the motorists ignoring The Great Highway will soon become a truncated version of its former self as the urgency of climate warming takes precedence over the motorists’ climate denying obsession to drive anytime, even on Spare the Air days, and everywhere, even when sand obliterates their road 100 days a year. The Great Highway will no longer be “great”. It will become a closed loop, like a Klein bottle. The voices from District 1 are being drowned out by the belligerent shouts from the motorists who believe they will shut down the advocates for Prop K. There are more advocates for a park than there are for a doomed freeway. Vote Yes for Ocean Beach Park.
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One airline flight releases many times as much C02 as the daily commuters of the UGH. Gavin Newsom and his cronies blocked even the monitoring of existing gas wells, known for methane emissions – which have a 50 times more powerful global warming effect comparatively, until 2030. That’s when they’ll begin MONITORING, but you pretend that by stopping people from driving a convenient route that saves gas and is safe somehow “saves the environment?”
You need to get real and fast. Liars like Breed, Engardio and Nossokoff are preying on people not paying attention.
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Gaslighting, lol? The only “gaslighting” I’m seeing here is from self-important people who think that driving a two-mile highway at 28 miles per hour is creating a major threat to climate change, lol!!! Learn a little more about what you’re talking about… if you seriously do want to do something about climate change, there are much bigger fish to fry than the Great Highway. If not, you sound just like another self-important bicyclist who can’t share the road with others. Is that you, Lee?
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Mr. Truong, it is disingenuous and absurd to compare CO2 pollution from planes to that of automobiles traveling on The Great Highway. I wasn’t aware you could take a plane from Lincoln Blvd to Sloat. Furthermore, cars cause the biggest share – 48% – of carbon dioxide emissions globally, according to an analysis by Statista (2022). This makes the sub-sector – cars and vans – the most emissions-laden mode of transport worldwide, over 4X that of even air travel, or Domestic Aviation, set at 11%. SUVs are very popular on The Great Highway. If SUVs were a country, they’d be the world’s 5th LARGEST EMITTER OF CO2! Imagine that. As for Mr. Rider415, a self-important bicyclist this humble reader of The Richmond Review is not. As a matter of fact, I am terrified of riding my bicycle on The Great Highway when cars are on it. Cars do not travel 28 mph on The Great Highway – they speed. The prima facie speed limit for The Great Highway is 45 mph set by the SFMTA Board of Directors (Resolution No. 170606-069). I have commuted by bicycle to Daly City and the cars whoosh by me on The Great Highway. The motorists often cross over the painted white boundaries of the bicycle lanes and they spook me. As for my being Lee Heidhues, Mr. Rider415? If I may borrow a line from “Phantom of the Opera”: “The waiting is over. Let the fantasy begin.”
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Mr. Rider415, correction. I believe the SFMTA Board of Directors REDUCED The Great Highway prima facie speed limit of 45 mph to 35 mph in their Resolution No. 170606-069. Either speed is deadly when a car collides with a bicyclist or a pedestrian. Yesterday two motorists were speeding on the Upper Great Highway and drove off the road onto the cliffs below and into our beloved abandoned Cliff House. One driver died. The collision damaged the Cliff House. Can you imagine if tourists were looking over the wall that the drivers crashed into and breached? There would have been a greater loss of life. The Great Highway is a dangerous road.
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“Mobility from land, air, and sea is still heavily reliant on polluting internal combustion engines (ICEs) and produced roughly 8.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO₂e) in 2023. This accounted for approximately 16 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that year, making transportation the second-largest source of emissions worldwide.”
And as that includes AIR travel AND all marine shipping, both very heavy emissions sources, in addition to vehicles – it all comes to 16%. So E.H. your statistics are woefully incorrect and perhaps a cause of your lack of understanding.
Bottom line, closing the UGH does nothing to fight climate change. You need to get real, and fast. You are ignoring well over 84% of the problem in your failed analysis, pretending that closing a main road in the area will at all help. In fact, you are greenwashing this shambolic proposition initiative. Period.
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And no, ONE motorist was speeding and struck a parked car near the Cliffhouse, which has NOTHING TO DO with the UGH closure as it isn’t slated for closure either way – nor would that prevent speeding motorists elsewhere.
You need to stop conflating unrelated things into your misinformed enthusiasm for Breed’s corrupt faux-futurism. Over a decade of her “project zero” spending of millions and millions we don’t have has resulted in one thing and one thing only – deficits she won’t be around to pay for. Pedestrian safety is even lower than when she began her PR dark money easter egg hunt.
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Cars can’t speed on the UGH without blowing red lights, and I’ve never seen that in over 30 years. Not once. The last person to die on UGH was Sheila Detoy, shot by SFPD in a stolen vehicle.
Debunked. It’s perhaps SF’s safest major thoroughfare of any of them.
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“What we’re debating tonight are two routes you could take, Lincoln or Sloat, that if you put them on a map, you create a rectangle,” Lux said. “This entire debate is which side of the rectangle are we driving on.”
That’s not a complete or accurate portrayal of the situation. If you want to get to Skyline and you turn left on Lincoln, then your choice to go south is basically Sunset. But then you’re joining traffic already there that’s headed to Stonestown/SF State or Brotherhood Way or around Lake Merced to Westlake Shopping Center. These are places that people turning left on Sloat are unlikely to be going to.
So keeping UGH open and turning left on Sloat and going around the Zoo helps balance out traffic flows and needs.
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