A crowd of revelers adorned in festive patriotic apparel basked in sushine as they gathered on the former Upper Great Highway to celebrate the second annual Fourth of July parade, at the newly christened Sunset Dunes park.
A lawsuit against the City of San Francisco alleging the closure of the Upper Great Highway to make way for Sunset Dunes park was done improperly is moving forward.
A lawsuit against the City of San Francisco alleging the closure of the Upper Great Highway to make way for Sunset Dunes park was done improperly is moving forward.
Before Proposition K was on the ballot, another westside promenade stirred fervor in westsiders. Three years ago, in April of 2022, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors established a permanently car-free John F. Kennedy (JFK) Drive in Golden Gate Park, after voters voted to keep JFK walkable, as it was during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and most weekends out of the year before that. Five years later, it is difficult to imagine that the mile-and-a-half stretch was once one of the City’s major arteries for cars.
A lawsuit challenging the closure of San Francisco’s Upper Great Highway (UGH) to vehicle traffic will be heard in a civil court in June.
Following the passing of Proposition K, a controversial ballot measure which now will turn the Upper Great Highway into a full-time city park, a group of westside residents are beginning their attempt to recall District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, who advocated for the measure to be on the ballot.
Despite being shot down by approximately 60% of Sunset District and 70% of Richmond District voters, the measure passed citywide by 54.7%, with support coming mostly from the City’s eastside residents.
Now, the City is quickly working to fully activate the space as a “car-free promenade” by early next year. On Nov. 21, the City was awarded a $1 million grant from the California State Coastal Conservancy to fund art projects, water fountains, trash bins, event programming and dune restoration.
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.
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.
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.
The end of the road is on the horizon for a section of the Great Highway between Sloat and Skyline boulevards, after a unanimous vote by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) on Oct. 10.
For the next three years, the Upper Great Highway (UGH) between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard will remain closed to cars from noon on Fridays to 6 a.m. on Mondays, despite pushback from two westside supervisors.
The controversy about whether the wheels rolling through Golden Gate Park and along the Upper Great Highway (UGH) should be on cars, or vehicles without motors, rolled into court in December via a lawsuit.
For a few hours on Sunday, Oct. 31, the Upper Great Highway between Taraval Street and Sloat Boulevard was transformed into a Halloween festival for trick-or-treating, pumpkin carving and dancing.
After more than a year of being closed to motor vehicles during the pandemic, when the Upper Great Highway was opened to cars again on weekdays last August, some saw this as a reasonable compromise. But a couple of dozen bicyclists who felt blindsided by the decision felt like they had been sold out, betrayed.
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 