Editor:

Line by line, here are the facts when they’re not twisted:

Voting Yes on Prop K will NOT create a park on the Upper Great Highway between Lincoln and Sloat. It will not be good for the environment, give people of all ages better access to the coast or bring new customers to our small businesses. The weekday closure of the highway will harm our families, our kids and grandkids who will suffer the effects of close to 100,000 vehicles per week being diverted from the safe highway onto local residential streets with dangerous intersections at every block.

Prop. K closes a very heavily driven section of the Great Highway.

Prop. K will force drivers onto Chain of Lakes and 19th Avenue. The Vision Zero District 4 Report Card published by WalkSF lists as two of the 10 most dangerous intersections: 41st Ave at Chain of Lakes; and Sunset Boulevard at Wawona Street. Several schools are in front of Sunset Blvd with its 3 lanes of heavy traffic in both directions. Imagine adding thousands more vehicles to it.

One has to question the Supervisor’s statement that the southern section of the Great Highway is necessarily closing after Election Day whether Prop. K wins or loses, because if that were true, why is it included as something voters will be voting on when they vote on Prop K?  See, Sec. 6.15 of Prop K. Restricting Vehicles on the Great Highway Extension. “… because that portion of the street is no longer needed for vehicular traffic.”

The section south of Sloat Boulevard has nothing to do with the utility of the Upper Great Highway between Lincoln and Sloat. If cars are forced to turn left at Sloat as they exit the southern end of the highway after entering from Lincoln, they drive a very short distance on Sloat before connecting with Skyline Blvd and continue on south down the coastal highway. This will directly connect them to Daly City and other southern destinations. Prop. K asks us to unnecessarily congest our roads, drive longer distances and travel through as many dangerous intersections as possible.

The utility, beauty and safety of the Great Highway is attributed to the fact that there are no on/off ramps for cars. Cars drive nonstop for two miles at 30 mph with no dangerous intersections or cross traffic via timed traffic lights. Prop. K bans vehicles from ever using the highway again, whether for twice daily commutes or the occasional scenic coastal ride.

Although this section of the Great Highway bypasses all the businesses and schools in the Sunset, that’s a good thing, a safe thing, and closing it will divert all the cars, trucks, delivery vans, construction vehicles, big rigs, and motorcycles (some in groups of 100+) onto the streets where they will drive right in front of several schools creating a dangerous situation.

Lincoln Way, Sunset Boulevard and 19th Avenue are all known for the injuries and crashes that regularly occur on them, but the opposite is true for this 2-mile section of the Great Highway. If the City could make these roads as safe as the highway, they would have done it by now, but all efforts have been costly failures. Nothing done so far has resulted in making these alternatives the preferred routes that have kept drivers from cutting through neighborhood streets.

Nowhere in Prop. K are voters asked: Do people want this road to become a park? Prop. K does not mention the word park or provide any funding for a park to replace the closed highway. It does not estimate the cost of a park. It does not ask for environmental studies before changing its use. It eliminates any possibility of community engagement about the data that was collected so far and stops all future data gathering. It does not provide any protection for the fragile eroding sand dunes. It ignores the ongoing destruction of the habitat of the endangered Snowy Plovers from the massive increase in foot traffic over the National Wildlife Sanctuary located between the west side of the highway and the beach. Oddly, Friends of Great Highway Park have a Snowy Plover mascot that entertains children as their spokesperson hands out propaganda and falsely claims passing Prop K will protect the endangered shorebirds by closing the Great Highway because “if there weren’t cars on the highway they wouldn’t be getting killed by cars running them over.” Wouldn’t it be great to see those statistics? Who has ever witnessed or even heard of one Snowy Plover being run over by moving traffic on the Great Highway? 

The question is, despite the fact that this section of highway is designed as a multi-use space for all to share whether walking, biking or driving, and is currently being used that way from 6 AM Monday through noon Fridays, why is it not enough to have it car free from noon every Friday, all day and night every Saturday, all day and night every Sunday and all day and night every holiday?

This is on the ballot because the Supervisor of District 4 put it there in the least open, transparent, and democratic way, blindsiding the majority of his constituents by secretly working on it for months to obtain input from the City Attorney and convincing 4 other supervisors to sign on, as he hid it from merchants and other directly impacted residents, and then strategically filed it on the last day to file a ballot measure so no opposition to it could be filed in time for this election. “The coast belongs to all San Franciscans and everyone should have a say,” is his justification for making sure 8 out of 11 San Francisco districts that do not and will not experience the daily impacts of a closed Great Highway (other than the precedent it will set for road closures throughout the City in their districts) will be voting on the fate of it, influenced by heavily financed propaganda being spread citywide by those whose favor he seeks.

To keep sharing the very safe Great Highway with the thousands of vehicles driving on it Monday through Friday, vote No on Prop K. A no vote will still keep it car free every weekend and holiday and for special events. NO on Prop K.

Judi Gorski.