Editor:
I have been a Sierra Club member since 1994. Why did the San Francisco chapter of the Sierra Club endorse Prop. K?
There is nothing green about closing the Upper Great Highway (UGH) to cars on weekdays. Not a single car will be taken off the road because UGH is closed. Pushing stop-and-go traffic onto nearby neighborhood streets will increase air pollution from exhaust fumes and make the roads more dangerous for pedestrians. Before you can get to Sunset, you have to go up Fulton for 15 blocks, stop and go. What is green about that?
There is no park, there are no trees, there are no plans or money for a park. It’s just a closed roadway; pavement and sand dunes,even if you choose to call it a park. And now they’ve painted murals on the roadway that will degrade due to the harsh conditions and spread micro plastics onto Ocean Beach.
Advocates for permanent closure of UGH to cars claim they have respect for the natural environment, but the increased activity will lead to dune erosion and may otherwise damage habitat. Without an Environmental Impact Report (EIR), the public cannot be informed and able to make the right choices. Why is it that the City has not yet started an EIR on this project? Does the Sierra Club think it’s responsible public policy to act without evaluating the environmental impact of what they are endorsing?
As I have written previously in the Richmond Review:
Even the language of Prop. K was misleading: “The restrictions on private vehicles have enabled people of all ages and all walks of life to safely recreate by the coast next to Ocean Beach by using the Upper Great Highway as a promenade for walking, jogging, biking, scooting and rolling.” You don’t need any additional restrictions on private vehicles to accomplish this. The UGH was already closed to private vehicles from noon on Friday to 6 a.m. Monday and every holiday. The rest of the time, there is Ocean Beach on one side and a broad promenade on the other side for people to engage in “walking, jogging, biking, scooting and rolling”.
As soon as we were made aware of Prop. K, we were also made aware of a well-funded, well-orchestrated advertising and promotional campaign proclaiming “Ocean Beach for Everyone.” Did the funders of these ads know about Prop. K beforehand? Doesn’t it make you wonder who is behind this and why they are putting in so much effort and money? The ad campaign was deliberately deceptive and a prime example of misinformation; Ocean Beach is already open to everyone and always has been.
The irony is that, aside from the painted pavements and some installations, most of the events, the food trucks, canopies, marquees and markets, will take place on weekends and holidays because, duh, people have to go to work during the week. The compromise solution keeps the road closed on weekends and holidays.
It is shameful that the San Francisco chapter of the Sierra Club supports a project that will degrade the environment and increase pollution from car exhaust. Something is very wrong there.
David Romano
Categories: letter to the editor
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
Greenwashing, in a word. Fundraising, for another.
It’s not the institution it was 30 years ago.
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Too true!
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Because the Sierra Club has been taken over by YIMBYs.
Do not neglect the logical supposition that this is being done to increase real estate values.
Mark Buell, head of the RPD Commission, is a retired real estate developer who lives in Bolinas.
https://commonsprotector.medium.com/the-buells-the-elitists-who-destroy-democracy-in-san-francisco-e00bf051d899
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Exactly! Well connected City hall insiders and the friends of Phil Ginsburg, Mark Buell and Scott Wiener plan to make a lot of money developing residential real estate in the Sunset.
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Some people call them carpetbaggers. They swoop in with bags of cash to pick off the low-hanging fruit. Once they grab a nice chunk of real estate they demand all the goodies the YIMBYs have promised them to maximize profits. Why do you think California is so interested in promoting itself as the 5th largest economy? Because the Sacramento politicians have done everything they can to make it the most expensive place in the world by turning the land into gold, raising the cost of utilities and insurance and everything else a person might need to live. Question is, who wants to be the most expensive in the world?
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Exactly, it’s why their “target” for SF is a combo of Manhattan and Paris.
People who have grown up here and raised families here are “in the way” of more YIMBY developer money. They’ve historically pretended it’s about lowering rents, but then they yank away the actual rent control protections for ADU’s (Engardio personally) and then remove basic low income housing % requirements for conversions of existing (Billionaire owned) downtown office buildings (again, Engardio personally). They’ll incentivize knocking all rent-controlled housing that exists, including those affordable locked-in rents that families and workers have ‘paid into the system’ this long to depend on, and replace them with MARKET RATE CONDO SKYSCRAPERS – after a 3-10 year process of disenfranchising and dislocating those existing long-term pieces of San Francisco’s beautiful fabric, no less.
The hardcore ‘activist-grade’ YIMBY’s drink that toxic kool aid by the gallon and are frankly high on a (propaganda) feeling that they’re helping save the world – it doesn’t do that, kids. It’s the opposite, right now. They may see in a decade or two what they’ve unwittingly bought from the Billionaires’ lobbyist investment in undermining local interests and control, if they even stick around that long, most probably will not. I guess we’ve all had it too good for too long, or something? It’s how they think about us; old ladies, families who drive cars and have paid their mortgages and taxes over all those years, we’re IN THE WAY now. Move over for the Yuppie developers, brought to you by Engardio and his team of sellouts and paid downtown sycophants. Speaking for myself? No thanks kids.
Go live in Paris. Go live in Manhattan. YIMBY lies aren’t worth our SF lives.
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Very good points you make and you are quite right. There is and always has been a walkway and bike both along both sides of the Great Highway. It is hard to believe that so many people are so easily tricked into beleiving public access was ever blocked. A lot of money went into the hoax and now a lot of money will go into protecting the supervisor who fooled the voters into trusting him. What will the believe? The lies they are being told or their life experience?
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Thank you David!! The Sierra Club has been taken over by the ignorant YIMBY movement. They are the sheep being led into the wolves den of development. As the wealthy build ocean view condos, these poor sheep will be led to the slaughter house.
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The Sierra Club, like every other political entity and commission in SF, has been stacked with Bicycle Coalition people and their “no car” agenda. That has to end.
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