SAN FRANCISCO – For years, San Francisco’s Great Highway has been under attack from Mother Nature, but now the city’s voters can retake the road before the Pacific Ocean has a chance to do so.
The Great Highway is the main artery that runs parallel to Ocean Beach. It was a struggle to keep the road clear of blowing sand, so during the pandemic the city closed the highway to vehicle traffic to give people a place to recreate safely. Many people fell in love with it.
“Kids were in front of computer screens and COVID and the Slow Streets (program) brought families together,” said Outer Sunset resident Tony Carroll. “And it was nice to see kids playing in the streets again like we did when we were kids.”
“During COVID, we were all here,” says Martha Abbene. “And now we have a very close community. We met the kids, we met the grandparents and that’s what this means to me.”
When the pandemic ended, people wanted the scheme to continue, so the city came up with a compromise: open the street to traffic during the week and close it to pedestrians and cyclists on weekends. That compromise is now coming to an end. In November, voters will be asked to decide whether the highway should be permanently closed to cars so it can be turned into a new 17-acre park.
“So if the voters vote yes, this will be a full-time boardwalk, open to all the people you see behind me right now,” said Lucas Lux, president of Friends of Great Highway Park.
The plan is to have motorists turn off at Lincoln Way and head south on Sunset Boulevard to Sloat Boulevard, where the Great Highway will soon be closed anyway due to beach erosion.
“It’s really a win-win situation,” Lux said. “Everyone gets a park on the ocean and you determine the new driving route inland, because we’re all going inland anyway. So let’s do it at Lincoln instead of one turn later at Sloat.”
Not everyone sees it as a win-win situation. Stephen and Judi Gorski’s home overlooks the area and they say it only really attracts visitors on weekends. They say their quiet neighborhood was overrun by all the cars banned from the highway during the pandemic and they expect that to happen again.
“The traffic will destroy the neighborhood,” Stephen said. “It will cause more health and safety problems. People get hit by cars almost all the time and why should it be closed during the week if no one uses it?”
The Gorskis fear that putting the issue on a citywide ballot will attract voters who will not be affected.
“If it’s not in my backyard, do it there,” Stephen said. “And then they come here – if they do – on the weekend. ‘It sounds good, but it’s not mine, what do I care?’ But when you are here, you care because the area here is being completely destroyed.”
“There’s really room for everyone to share it,” Judi said. “There is no reason to close it and you have a beautiful beach that has never been damaged by cars going back and forth.”
The proposed park is still just a concept; there are no plans and no funding for it. The vote will simply decide whether cars will be removed from the two-mile stretch of highway. It appears there are enough supervisors who support the measure to place it on the ballot. So come November, the fate of the Great Highway will likely be decided by the quicksand of politics.
