This Great Highway Obsession Must End For the Good of San Francisco

Dear Neighbors in District 4,

I am writing to you from a faraway place that most of you have probably never visited, because according to local media, you spend all your time driving back and forth from the SF Zoo to the Golden Gate Park windmills. 

Greetings from District 10. That’s the southeast corner of the city, if you’re not familiar: the Bayview, Dogpatch, Potrero Hill, Visitacion Valley, and more. I feel compelled to reach out because I just read that you’re gathering signatures to reintroduce a ballot measure to reopen the Great Highway. 

If your out-of-town friend reads this and asks, “But why would someone not in your neighborhood feel so strongly about this ballot measure?” here’s a brief recap for them:

In March 2020, San Franciscans went into one of the most restrictive pandemic lockdowns in the country. To help us spend time outside, the city limited traffic on several local streets and called them Slow Streets. My neighborhood got Slow Lane Street, where my three preschoolers could run and ride their bikes because, remember, playgrounds and schoolyards were closed.

But it only lasted a week after neighbors complained to our supervisor they had to drive too slowly. In a district with one of the highest concentrations of children, it was like our Slow Street was never there. 

Meanwhile, City Hall went further with the Upper Great Highway, which runs along Ocean Beach, closing a nearly two-mile stretch to cars on weekends; and with Golden Gate Park, barring cars completely from John F. Kennedy Drive. 

The Frisc encourages submissions of opinion and commentary from diverse perspectives. Please email your idea to hello@thefrisc.com with the word COMMENTARY in capitals. The opinions we publish are not necessarily those of The Frisc, but they are of San Francisco.

Emerging from the pandemic, most supervisors read the room and voted in 2022 to close JFK to cars permanently. (My supervisor voted against it.) Voters reinforced the ban in subsequent ballot votes. 

A similar thing happened with the Great Highway. Supervisors in 2022 affirmed the weekend closure as a three-year pilot project. Then the District 4 supervisor Joel Engardio led the charge for permanent closure via a 2024 ballot measure. It won with 55 percent of the citywide vote (but lost on the west side) and last year became Sunset Dunes Park. 

Then District 4 residents, whom I hadn’t thought about much before but are now emerging as extremely sore losers, got enough signatures to trigger a special election to recall Engardio. And it worked.

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The mayor had to appoint an interim supervisor to the District 4 seat. One week later, he had to appoint another. The new-new guy, Alan Wong, half-heartedly tried to work up a “re-open the highway to cars” proposal for the June ballot, but he failed. 

Now, a retired police commander is leading the charge to get the re-opening proposal on the November ballot. 

Your Sunset life

Hopefully, your friend is up to speed now. Let’s get into the reasons it would be better for all of San Francisco if you dropped this and moved on with your lives, which you likely live within shouting distance of Golden Gate Park on one side and a two-mile stretch of  Pacific shoreline on another. 

As Fox News likes to tell us, we are a city full of problems. Take your pick. (Did you hear about the mountain lion in District 2?) That District 4 chooses to burn resources on this issue — I’ll be generous and call it Quixotic instead of idiotic — is not neighborly and takes away from more pressing situations. 

You lost. Enjoy the park! I’ll see you there because, remember, I do not have a Slow Street in my neighborhood to stroll out to and enjoy. Drivers continually blow through our stop signs because my supervisor decided our kids don’t need a Slow Street. No one ever voted on it.

Much of the water on my side of the city is too toxic to swim in, and the shoreline is too industrial for foot traffic. So I need to come over to your side and use the beach too. 

Sand reasoning

By now, your friend is saying, “I hope she gets to the actual reasons and quits griping about the problems in District 10.” Well, if your friend is a reasonable person, I only need one reason to convince them: the Great Highway had to be closed to cars more than 25 times a year due to sand and flooding, sometimes for weeks. Sand removal was estimated to cost the city $1.7 million a year.

This does not include the environmental cost of bringing large-scale equipment to a fragile beach environment. The Great Highway extension, south of Sloat Boulevard, was already closed for good due to coastal erosion. Why, neighbors, do you think you can win against the Pacific Ocean? What kind of hubris is this?  

Please give this up. I understand your main gripe is about traffic, but before the recreational closures, were you complaining to the wind and ocean when sand made the Great Highway impassable?

Increasing and improving public transit in the Sunset and the city as a whole is the most effective way to cut down on traffic woes. I would love to see a 44 Rapid or Express from my neighborhood to Golden Gate Park. I drive in the Sunset frequently, and it’s not as bad as the squeaky wheels make it out to be. 

I’m not even going to get into your refusal to build multistory housing in a city where thousands sleep on the street every night. Just throw the rest of SF a bone here. Let’s get back to fighting about the important stuff,  like who will replace Nancy Pelosi, or how to refill the Academy of Sciences swamp now that Claude is gone.

— Your neighbor in District 10, Andrea Rease 

The Frisc encourages submissions of opinion and commentary from diverse perspectives. Please email your idea to hello@thefrisc.com with the word COMMENTARY in capitals. The opinions we publish are not necessarily those of The Frisc, but they are of San Francisco.