If it seemed incongruous for the opponents of Proposition K, the ballot measure to close the Great Highway to cars, to rally on Valencia Street earlier this week, the point to the organizers was clear: The city’s decision to put a bike lane in the middle of Valencia Street was wrong, as is closing the Great Highway to cars.
“The Valencia bike lane project serves as a cautionary example, with merchants reporting declining foot traffic and frustrated customers struggling with street access,” wrote Prop. K opponents in a press release.
The problem with political theater, however, is that it often stretches the facts. And on Valencia Street, the data never matched claims of ruined business and plummeting revenue.
Reporting on tax revenue by Mission Local and the controller’s office found that, while Valencia corridor businesses were suffering, the bike lane was not responsible. “There is no statistical basis for linking the two,” wrote the controller’s office.
Proposition K, if it passes in November, would permanently close the Great Highway between Sloat Boulevard and Lincoln Way to traffic. Proponents argue it will allow for a park, benefit the environment and provide economic opportunity for the area.
The fate of the highway south of Sloat Boulevard has already been decided: It will close due to coastal erosion. The section of the highway connecting the Richmond and Sunset districts would not be affected.
Proposition K affects the Upper Great Highway between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard
remain open
to cars
proposed
oceanfront park
and closure
to cars
already
set to close
due to erosion
remain open
to cars
proposed
oceanfront park
and closure to cars
already set to close
due to erosion
Map by Junyao Yang.
District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar, one of five supervisors who placed Prop. K on the ballot, said she was perplexed that the comparison to Valencia Street was a talking point at Wednesday’s rally. No matter the inaccurate claims on the bike lane’s impact, “There are no businesses along the Great Highway right now,” Melgar said. There are, however, stores in the Sunset, such as along Taraval and Noriega streets, that might be helped by the rerouted traffic. “If you are a business in the Sunset, you would want traffic to come to your business,” Melgar said.
Melgar’s opponent, Matt Boschetto, has sponsored the “No on K” committee and spoke during Wednesday’s rally on Valencia Street. His family has contributed more than $65,000 to oppose the measure. The committee supporting Proposition K has drawn in much more money: Over $650,000, about half of that from Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman.
Some opponents have faulted Prop. K because it does not mandate funding, or outline how a park should eventually be created. The proposition simply asks voters whether the road should be closed to be repurposed as a recreation area.
“There’s no money for this. So what’s going to happen? The road will close and RVs will take over,” said Marie Hurabiell, the head of the public pressure group ConnectedSF, during Wednesday’s rally.
But for its proponents, designating the area as a park space is the first step to actually building a park. Doing so will make the city eligible for federal and state grants, according to Lucas Lux, who is running the “Yes on K” campaign. “You have to secure the land before planning park improvements on it,” said Lux.
“Even if we put zero money into it, it will be a popular park — with just asphalt,” said Supervisor Joel Engardio, one of the co-sponsors of the measure and the area’s representative. Proponents have likened the project to JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park, which closed to car traffic after voters rejected Prop. I and passed Prop. J in November 2022.
Closing the Great Highway would also save money, according to the Office of the Controller, which estimated $1.5 million in one-time capital cost savings and about $350,000 to $700,000 in annual operational and maintenance costs. Currently, removing sand from the road is costly — and sand results in the road closing some 32 times a year.
Another point of contention is the prospect of increased congestion, despite data from the SFMTA indicating little impact on traffic from the closure of the Great Highway. The agency has measured the traffic impacts during the weekend closures — the Great Highway is currently closed to cars on weekends — and on days when the road is closed due to sand. Drivers who take an alternate route, typically Sunset Boulevard, experience a three-minute delay during peak weekday hours, according to a July report.
If Proposition K is rejected, there is no guarantee that the Great Highway will remain closed to cars on weekends, because the current arrangement, which was instigated by the Board of Supervisors, expires in December 2025. In 2023, the weekend promenade hosted 420,000 visits from pedestrians and cyclists. Meanwhile, vehicle ridership on the Great Highway during the week is 38 percent below pre-pandemic levels.
This data appears to be something some Prop. K opponents disregard, and instead view as government overreach that is out of touch with residents. “For major changes, community engagement is a minimum ask of your political leaders,” Boschetto wrote in a post on X about Prop. K earlier this month.
Those behind Prop. K disagree. “There is nothing more open, transparent and democratic about people voting on what they want to use that space for,” said Engardio.
Correction: This article incorrectly stated that there are storefronts on Sunset Boulevard. Rather, there are stores in the Sunset which can be accessed via Sunset Boulevard.
The 62% of vehicles that DO use the GH are likely parents and employees who need to drive to, or through the City for work and school. Transit or biking are not options for many, and the idea that taking Sunset (or blasting through stop signs in the outer avenues) only adds three minutes to travel time is ridiculous. My Friday evening commute from the Presidio to Pacifica is at least 20 minutes longer. But I don’t get to vote on this…
Why shouldn’t Pacifica get a vote on it? Dishonest Prop K is on the ballot for 9 districts that aren’t affected at all in SF, and only the 2 adjacent will suffer the consequences of blatant corruption and malfeasance by Engardio. I don’t see why they should get a vote and you shouldn’t, it’s completely idiotic either way.
I live on Bryant st, which used to be about the same as most other parts of the Mission I imagine; light traffic, nothing more or worse than the other parallel streets, it was pretty evenly dispersed. Until they remade Folsom, removing an entire lane of traffic in either direction and slowing traffic to bike speed, making it useless as a driving route through the neighborhood- there has been a daily traffic jam and backup every single rush hour since then of cars trying to get to the freeway. Maybe the traffic has gotten worse overall in that time, probably so, but I can tell you firsthand the change was literally overnight initially. Every single afternoon people sit in stopped traffic and honk at each other for an hour or so; completely avoidable if we just had city planning that actually took all factors into account at ONCE (cars, bikes, busses, etc) instead of swaying like reeds to one single issue constituency after another. Oh the bike coalition won this one, they get Folsom st we will compensate for this by… doing nothing! Oh people want a park we’ll just plop one down on the only driving thruway in the area I mean… that’ll probably be fine what could go wrong! I’m sure people will just find some other way to drive north to south and I mean it’s not like there’s much traffic on sunset and 19th ave or anything during busy times… right??
I feel like choosing Valencia st for this article is kind of cynical and allows you to twist the issue honestly; is anyone saying Valencia was an essential car street? It’s always been slow (and short); that’s not what the problem with Valencia is, it has a whole other host of issues. It IS the issue with turning something CALLED THE GREAT HIGHWAY into a park however. Oh but I’m sorry, they measured on the weekend and decided the closure didn’t cause congestion ummmmmm…. you do see why this is completely irrelevant to weekday traffic…. don’t you?
Anyway if I want to walk etc by the beach I will do so, as I have for decades, by going to the beach… but sometimes I, a disabled person who cannot simply take a nice bike ride, want to drive along the coast, one of the great joys of living here, or simply travel to from Lincoln to Sloat in less than 30 minutes, and I would also like to be able to do that.
Fully agree.
YES ON K. Families, pedestrians, & cyclists will enjoy the space. Cars can just drive on another stroad
The entire point is there is no safer road for pedestrians than having cars on the Great Highway instead of on residential streets with stop signs every 2nd block, at best.
You can continue your war on the working class (under the guise of environmentalism, it isn’t at all) in other ways without selling off the public commons to private development, as K is actually a trojan horse for that – hence the Billionaire real estate backing. Or do you think Billionaires care whether you want to bicycle? Laughable.
Cyclists have the entire city to bike. Pedestrians have the path along the entire GH.
That it’s so sparingly used right now by either group really tells the tale, on any given day when 20,000+ SF residents use it to actually go places, because they have to.
Yes on K! It’s a common-sense solution that we’re going to get to anyways, due to climate change-induced erosion. Let’s be proactive about this change so we can better plan for it and start benefitting from Ocean Beach Park soon. Like car-free JFK, I expect this to be controversial before the vote and so obviously a good choice afterward, with people wondering how it could ever have been otherwise.
Wrong. Roads are going to continue to exist for the foreseeable future, and this does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE.
Pro-K people have been lying about that from day 1. It’s nonsense. It’s a deliberate lie and you’ve fallen for it seemingly deliberately also without thinking. The developers who pushed it with Billionaire money were counting on you being confused, that was always their plan and the reason they sprung it at the very last minute without proper study or analyses. It’s an obvious grift.
Yes on K!
How would closing the road and making it a park suddenly save all that money spent on clearing sand off the road? You’d still need to clear all that sand off the road even if it’s technically a “park” now, it’s not going to just stopping drifting because it’s a park now. And if any park infrastructure is put on the asphalt, cleaning costs will go up because of these added obstacles that weren’t there to clean around before.
Why, of course all those RVs that Marie Hurabiell says will move in there will stop the sand, David.
“There is nothing more open, transparent and democratic about people voting on what they want to use that space for,” said the corrupt District 4 sellout.
“And it’s the same with using Billionaire money laundered for the purpose of developing the public commons for private profit, and springing that on a constituency dishonestly at the very last possible minute without actual study – whether the two districts affected actually want that or not. Hence making it a citywide vote and defeating the point of district representation entirely, like my Billionaire developer paymasters have long called for but were unable to achieve politically.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a total sellout to corrupt developers and pretending everyone wants that.”
My family member is disabled, chronically ill and with few things she can enjoy, but one being a car ride down the Great Highway. Alas, it will now go the way of JFK GG Park. I guess there just aren’t enough recreation areas in SF for the able bodied. Even this one has to be taken away. And no, the condition does not make it amenable to public transit or wheelchair. Between the takeover of sidewalks from disabled access to the impulse to shut down car traffic in various scenic places for recreation, this is not a city hospitable to the disabled.
VOTE NO on K. Get the facts straight. The midsection of the Great Highway will not be a victim of erosion (check out any projection by NOAA). SF downtown and the Mission District will be used by paddleboarders before the Great Highway is overcome by the ocean. Data obtained by Sunshine Requests show that closing the Great Highway on Friday afternoons alone diverts 220,000 cars per year onto the Lower Great Highway (never mind other neighborhood streets), putting all that toxic pollution at neighborhood doorsteps (223 metric tons of CO2 plus deadly amounts of particulate matter). Extrapolate that out to 5 weekday closures and that’s more than 2 million additional cars into the neighborhood (please don’t say traffic will be mitigated–SFMTA already did that). The estimated cost in human time lost is $44 million per year. Most of these toxic effects are dumped on working class and non-white neighbors. K is a racist and classist policy.
Isn’t there a giant beach park already, just to west of the Great Highway?
It seems like this is just the expansion of an existing park while creating further barriers to travel between neighborhoods.
It should be called the great porkway. it’s a useless piece of expensive road that serves very few drivers.
20,000+ per day that don’t have to divert through busy residential streets (where you do not live, no less) you mean?
Pro K zealots tend to forget that people actually live here already, and that the entire length of the Great Highway already has a pedestrian path, not to mention an entire beach! Bicyclists are allowed to ride the Great Highway already – and there’s never been a fatality involving one there. The entire Pro K argument is yuppie appeasement and avoiding CEQA for pro-development YIMBYism run amok. Natives know better. Just follow the money to the Billionaire real estate / techies pushing it.
Also the cost to maintain the “road” doesn’t go down when you declare it a “park” – The opposite, they have an unfunded liability now. It will literally cost tens of millions to taxpayers in developing “the park” into the Billionaire private equity playground you seek. It’s a trojan horse for development, and they do not care how much it costs because “WE” are on the hook for that, not them. They only reap the rewards of privatizing the commons, never the liabilities.
Think about it. Do Billionaires drop millions just so you can bicycle?
Besides the obvious ecological and recreation benefits, Prop K looks very good for local businesses in the Sunset. An economic impact analysis projected $6 million to $12 million of additional spending at Sunset businesses with a full-time park there drawing visitors. https://transpomaps.org/projects/san-francisco/ocean-beach-park
There are zero ecological benefits. The SFMTA data show that the cars just get diverted. There is no evidence that people recreate more either. They just walk there instead of someplace else. In fact, there is probably an ecological cost: People say things like: People will only drive a few minutes more. Well, multiply that out and we’re talking about 5+ million cars a year driving 87,000 extra hours. Why would anybody vote for more cars, more pollution, and more damage to the environment? Racist, classist, and spewing out more greenhouse gases. Vote no on K if you love the environment and all people.
it is obvious from the center of the street design that the valencia street bike lane was meant to be a necessary ‘freeway’ for cyclists not a convenience for the merchants or lazy drivers.
closing the great highway is obviously meant to be an expansion of necessary open space for the residents of the city not a convenience for the selfish private motor vehicle operators.
What is proponents’ source for the claim that the Great Highway is the 3d most visited park in the Rec and Park system? One might think that Dolores, Duboce and Golden Gate would be at the top.
Duboce?!
The sand will have to be removed from the park also unless some giant wall is built to retain it.
They’re both bad ideas for different reasons.
Do the math. Three minutes/car x 10,000 cars/ day = 30,000 minutes/day = 500 hours = 21 days worth of extra exhaust/day that cars cannot use the GH. How is that environmentally friendly. Please, NO on K.
The SFMTA traffic data is misleading because it is limited in time and usage. If the data were drawn over a longer period of time to include full months for example and exclude data from the pandemic, we could make more sensible plans. It is part of the larger problem of lack of planning that will affect this project.
Also, the city will have to continue to pay for sand removal otherwise how will the roadway continue to be used by strollers, bikers and everyone else?
Finally, the local business owners who currently see some negligible benefits / increase in sales on sunny days are fully aware that those days are small
bumps and definitely not the linchpins of their businesses. The bulk of sales is still the majority gray and foggy days during which businesses are patronized by locals and /or people who drive to use their services.
Also many coffee shops and restaurants are bothered by the fact that the city continues to push for food trucks on closed roads which siphon business away.
If the city wants to keep the Great Highway open, fine, but work and due diligence must be done and is lacking in this incarnation.
Engardio has lost his next election already by turning a deaf ear to longtime residents and business owners and pandering to the new money/new homeowners who are primarily self-interested and deaf to the needs of the community that has been here (and btw thriving without them).
The Great Highway extension is not closing due to erosion, it is closing because of flawed public policy. The erosion that ocurred in 2009 was halted by the placement of a rock revetment in front of the Treatment Plant in 2010. Then the Coastal Commission ruled that the rocks had to be removed because they don’t like hard structures on the beach. Instead of telling the Coastal Commission that removing the rocks would put the treatment plant at risk they paid SPUR to devise a plan to do that. That “managed retreat” plan has evolved to include a massive concrete seawall from Sloat to the Treatment Plant on a permit good for only 20 years costing at minimum $250 million. The Coastal Commission wouldn’t approve the existing rocks, yet they approved a giant seawall, but only for 20 years.
Yo! The Wiener (outta New Jersey – thanks) and his cohorts are bound and determined to see SF packed with at least a million people – thanks again. You know – those 81K units with pressure on the Westside to start squeezing them in. You’re going to force these folks not to have cars? With our crappy transit system? Sunset Blvd. is going to be an ultra crawl with traffic spilling into all the side streets.
But – hey – they’re still keeping and maintaining a vehicular roadway – for emergency vehicles. Which is nice cause in 10 years there will be a ballot measure demanding this roadway be reopened to all traffic.
Valencia is fine, but for greater economic and social conditions that have changed things, and a few businesses looking for someone to blame. Looking forward to the demise of a few of them and to better places filling their underutilized spaces.
This is why people who don’t live in the neighborhood shouldn’t get a say, as you obviously live and work nowhere near Valencia either.