District 4 Supervisor Alan Wong’s promise to reopen the Great Highway to cars via a ballot measure turned out to be unsafe at any speed. The blame for this political lemon, according to Wong’s fellow supervisors, falls on Wong.
At the 5 p.m. deadline to submit the measure, Wong was short by one signature; Department of Elections staff moments ago confirmed that there would be no ballot measure.
San Francisco has one of the lowest ballot thresholds in California, requiring only four legislators to sign a measure onto the ballot. But only Wong himself, Supervisor Connie Chan and Supervisor Chyanne Chen signed the dotted line.
Supervisor Shamann Walton — who did not favor Prop. K of 2024, which transformed the Great Highway into a park — today opted against joining Wong’s effort.
“When it comes to ballot measures, my priorities are to advocate for things that serve District 10 residents and the city as a whole,” said Walton via text. “There are several important issues and critical priorities on the June ballot, and I do not want us to be distracted by a measure that was not well thought-out, introduced at the last minute and constantly changing.”
The outcome was not surprising: Wong’s rollout of the proposal — he failed to lobby fellow supervisors until the 11th hour, and purportedly did not do so in person — left both supporters and opponents of the ballot measure befuddled. “I wish we had been approached and asked to have conversations about this much earlier,” said one City Hall insider close to the process.
“You’d think he’d line up his votes before talking to the press. It’s a self-inflicted mistake,” said political consultant David Ho. “If this doesn’t get on, it’s quite embarrassing, but not a total loss. He could still say, ‘I represented my constituents’ sentiment.’”
On Monday afternoon, Wong defended his approach.
“I’ve been very transparent … It’s very simple legislation. People can easily take a position on it,” he said. “I’ve shared the legislation multiple times with other offices and the media. There should be no confusion where people should stand.”
The ballot measure would have reintroduced cars onto the Great Highway on weekdays, while keeping it a pedestrian- and bicycle-only park during the weekends.
But Wong significantly altered even that basic proposal just a day before the deadline. He added amendments on Monday that he said were proposed by Chan. One would have allowed cars back onto the Great Highway not only on weekdays, but also possibly on weekends under “exceptional circumstances.”
Those circumstances were not defined, and Wong did not specify how diverting hundreds of adults and children off a bike- and walkway would work in practice.
“If there are exceptional circumstances, such as if there’s unprecedented congestion, closure of the Chain of Lakes, or some giant concert happening, that could cause issues for the neighborhood,” Wong said on Tuesday afternoon.
Chan’s district, the Richmond, has been impacted in past years by increased traffic during concerts like Outside Lands in Golden Gate Park.
Supervisors — even Chan, who decided to sign on — said they had received little prior communication from Wong to seek their support.
Chan only offered her support on Sunday. Chen did so 20 minutes before the deadline. And all the supervisors, sympathetic or not, first received a draft proposal last Thursday, six days before the deadline.
Chen’s office only received the final draft — containing the language that would appear on the ballot — at 4:15 p.m. on Monday, about an hour after the press had received its copy.
Wong, for his part, said supporting the measure should not have been controversial. “The bottom line is: It’s a six-page document. It’s pretty straightforward,” he said. Wong said it should not make “that big of a difference how soon people see” the final draft.
City Hall insiders were, across the board, perplexed by that assertion: Reopening the Great Highway and shutting down Sunset Dunes is a political minefield. Lobbying fellow supervisors for their support on such a contentious issue requires tact — and time. It might also require facetime, meaning in-person discussions. Supervisors say that didn’t happen.
The last-minute amendments were also problematic. If Chain of Lakes Drive were congested on a Saturday, for example, the general manager of the Recreation and Parks Department — which has authority over the Great Highway, not SFMTA — would have been able to make the call to open the park to cars, Wong said on Monday.
Transit professionals viewed Wong’s proposal with dismay.
“That would be such a mess. What an awful situation to create,” said Sarah Jones, the former planning director of the SFMTA and a major player in planning and enacting car-free JFK Drive. “Who’s gonna tell the park director to do that?”
Advocates for reopening the Great Highway may opt to gather signatures from citywide voters for a potential November ballot measure. “We have an opportunity to listen to people on East side and make our case to them,” said Lisa Arjes, a major benefactor of the effort to recall Supervisor Joel Engardio after his championing of removing cars from the Great Highway.
Walton said he’d still favor a ballot measure regarding the Great Highway in November.
“I continue to support a compromise from the community around the Great Highway,” wrote Walton, whose chief of staff, Natalie Gee, is running against Wong. “I look forward to supporting the community-led process to get a measure on the ballot in November that will be well thought-out, not rushed and not disjointed.”
Such a measure would have been politically advantageous for Wong in June, however: Wong is up for election that month after being appointed to the vacant District 4 seat by Mayor Daniel Lurie in November. His face could have graced paid campaign mailers for the ballot measure, and those who turned out to vote for the measure might also have voted for him.
Nearly two-thirds of District 4 voters inveighed against taking cars off the Great Highway in 2024, even as nearly 55 percent of voters, citywide, favored doing so.
“He’s trying to appease his constituents,” Jones said. “Maybe it’s about putting something forward… but knowing that it’s not going to work. He might know full well — because of the way he did it — it’s gonna crash and burn.”
Wow, Connie Chan proposed last minute amendments that made this ballot measure confusing and unworkable? Shocking. Didn’t she already play that card with upzoning?
Whether you’re for or against reopening the great highway during the week, all her proposal did was make a big hash of things. Much like her upzoning proposals would have done. Let’s not send her to Congress to do the same.
We should be glad that the rich NIMBYs of SF have Chan and Wong to represent them. They’re just stunningly incapable.
@Jeff – She’s played that card a number of times. Day late and a dollar short.
Real ones remember her 11th hour proposal for JFK (during the BoS meeting before the ballot measures), which would have sent drivers down one-way streets into each other with no way out
OK, he did the favor for the shrill entitled drivers in the Sunset. Now can he get back to supervising?
If he wants a highway so badly he can bulldoze his home and build an onramp. Leave the rest of us out, please.
I think you’re making the west side’s point. Leave us alone!
The entire Sunset and Richmond want to be able to avoid a 30-45 minute traffic jam that was invented by illegally skipping CEQA by a liar who broke a hard fought compromise with a deliberately dishonest citywide vote.
When we as a city vote to turn your street into a kitschy privately-owned plastic “art” gallery instead of what it is, a functional road, you will maybe understand how stupid the entire process was. The 2 districts affected are the only ones who should get a vote.
At least we got rid of lying carpetbagger Engardio, that’s a win either way.
@NDP – The argument that it’s “illegally skipping CEQA” was dismissed by a judge, so no, not all that illegal. But even better, the thing that supposedly made Prop K “illegally skipping CEQA” is that it was put on the ballot by Supervisors — you know, precisely the thing Supervisor Wong was trying to do.
As for the “hard fought compromise,” the only fight was 2022’s Prop I, put on the ballot by people who wanted cars there 24/7 (they lost). 2024’s Prop K was about what to do after the “hard fought compromise” reached its expiration date (we won).
This is total BS and you know it. You do not own the beach, get over it.
Oh, hey, you’re that guy who kept squealing about “the lawsuit! the lawsuit!” Too bad about that. Now you’re on to lying about traffic? Maybe that will work.
You want a private highway for your luxury cars and you want the rest of the city to pay. No thanks.
What traffic jam? When I was out there this afternoon (Tuesday) the park was packed with joggers, strollers and cyclists.
And why is it impossible for you to understand that the road was going to be closed anyway per the Ocean Beach Climate Change Adaptation Project. Opening it back up to cars “because traffic” makes absolutely no sense.
Word!
At this moment, just before 6pm on a Wednesday evening during rush hour, it takes 13 minutes to drive between Fulton/Great Highway and the Zoo. I haven’t experienced or seen a “30-45 minute traffic jam” and I live in the Outer Richmond and travel between it and the Sunset.
NDP is right. True Independently Traffic study showed that closing great highway impacted and caused traffic jams nearby avenues causing the avenue to be unsafe & disruptive to businesses. This wasn`t about safety but it was scoring political point for now-recalled D4 Supervisor
compromise was safest plan.
The study was without any political activity…
The Sunset needs to understand that if they want the tax money from the rest of the city they need to cooperate with us. Until they learn that they will keep losing.
The neighborhood is full of people who own million dollar houses. These are not working class people. Don’t be fooled. These are rich people who want a private highway.
We see their true colors every time there’s a proposal for the Sunset to have a homeless shelter. They don’t want a neighborhood in the city. They want a gated community and they want to keep you out.
Rich ppl doing rich ppl tricks all across SF, but please, let’s try to focus our ire on the truly wealthy, and not paint with such a wide, divisive brush. I know this is gonna sound weird to ppl not from SF, but I’m working class, aspiring to middle (every other year bouncing btwn medi-cal/CoveredCA boundary — if you know, you know), and it’s a form of gentrification that put me & my partner in a million-dollar house with a mortgage we soon won’t be able to afford and unrealistic property tax that will force me out of the city. Cashing out to pay off the bank and moving out is the only option, just as retirement is around the corner. I’ve been in the city for half my life, and I’m being forced out. I know you’re (probably?) not talking to me, and rather to the ones actually causing my/our dilemma, but any class war needs to be inclusive and unified against the real 1%, not “the sunset”. (Btw, I’m all for keeping the cars out of the city as much as possible, including Great Hwy, so, same page on that. Not that I’ll be here to enjoy it in my golden years, unfortunately.)
“needs to understand”. Textbook paternalistic attitude.
“Textbook paternalistic attitude” is when a “special” part of the city thinks their votes matter and the rest of us doesn’t.
The rich homeowners and luxury car drivers of the Sunset shouldn’t be surprised when the working class pushes back.
Nonsense, “tax money” spend has always been biased towards east of Twin Peaks. Where’s underground Muni service on Geary, where’s the auxiliary water supply system for the west side, where’s consistent undergrounding of power and comms lines?
That’s a large driver of the animosity towards closing Great Highway.
If City or Muni want to money into their budget measures they need District 4 to pass it…as i see not going happen
Great Highway belong all users not “political car free groups>
That’s a rather ignorant statement. A lot of those residents have lived there for decades and few are “rich”. Houses in nearly every district are “million dollar houses”, and lots of us have lived in ours for decades and are not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. If you have a decent income you can buy a “million dollar house” with a 30 year mortgage and not be “rich”.
The Great Highway is hardly “private”; where do you come up with this nonsense? I’d drive it every day when I lived in the Richmond to get to 280 – it’s a necessary pathway to relieve traffic on 19th Ave.
I guess you must be new to SF.
The median price of a home in the Sunset is well over $1M.
It is now between $1.5 to $1.75 M.
Why is that?
What special things have Sunset property owners done to their homes and neighborhood to justify such absurd valuations?
Answer: Due to their anti-housing NIMBY-led policies over the course of decades, they have kept adequate amounts of housing from being created relative to demand.
Accordingly, the Sunset is hardly a working class district, it is a thoroughly gentrified place and based upon comments such as “Sam’s” above, it is also thoroughly nativist.
Oh no not transplants, anything but that! The horror! How dare they come here without asking you first! We should build a wall to keep out that riffraff!
To recap, in a spectacular pratfall, Wong managed to piss off park supporters, particularly by having his mind apparently made up before any community input; piss off the highway-brained by failing to get the issue on the ballot regardless; screwed over Connie by getting her signature on a DOA measure that still provides ammunition to rightfully savage her as a regressive, conservative NIMBY in the congressional race, which Scott and Saikat will surely seize upon; and further tanked his own reelection campaign in June not only by failing on the one issue he needlessly made himself the face of but allowing Walton to not so slyly boost the inevitable upcoming candidacy of his gal Gee by letting her run not only on shuttering the park, but also on succeeding where Wong failed which would now require a very low competence bar. Masterclass all around.
Well said
Should you be considering voting for Connie Chang to replace Nancy Pelosi, keep in mind how easily she was bullied into supporting a minority position benefitting a small population of Bay Area residents. NOT what San Francisco needs to send to Congress.
San Francisco doesn’t have a politician named Connie Chang.
“bullied”. By whom? Looks more like an opportunistic move she knows is symbolic anyways. Politicos gonna politicoe… Not that she’d get my vote one way or another anyways.
Omg learn to read people’s names please
It’s actually a supermajority in both districts affected. Try again.
Goofs from Bernal aren’t impacted and shouldn’t have gotten a vote.
In a city, we all vote together. Civics 101.
We’re a city, not a group of neighborhoods. Amen
Let me give you a tip: your side keeps losing because it’s arrogant and repellent. You believe that you can take the money from the rest of the city and not give them a vote.
Maybe if you realized you have to be persuasive you could accomplish something.
This is how you kill something stupid. I just hope the incompetence is feigned for his sake.
Position on Sunset Dunes aside, can we talk about the fact that Walton was for reopening, until the option to embarrass Wong presented itself? Inside baseball says he made the call to benefit Gee.
This City, man…
The June election is going to be low turnout, but the November election will be anything but!
I do mean this in the kindest way possible but if anti-park advocates continue to be so put out by this road closure and if phantom traffic jams are truly ruining their lives why don’t they just move? Suburbs seem much more their style anyways.
That timeline and Wong’s statements really make it clear he is out of his depth in this job. I’d really like to know what Chen was thinking signing onto something so sloppy that was already doomed to fail. I’m sure Marie Hurabiel and friends will try to gather signatures again but if the mayor is smart he’ll use every back channel and bully pulpit he has to stop them from tanking the Muni funding measures.
Supe Wong should never have done this in the first place, at least not until he had compelling polling data that the measure would have a chance to pass. However, not all is lost. He could help the westside by working to actually build a smooth alternative route around the park – the one Engardio and SFMTA never delivered on. Traffic deserves a smooth ride up Lincoln (where flow is now choked by several new stop signs). Sunset Boulevard proper also needs work because the traffic signals were never synchronized as was promised.
Lincoln is the boundary between a neighborhood full of people and a park they deserve safe and easy access to. That should always take priority over personal car convenience.
“Traffic signals were never synchronized…”? When I drove it daily in the 90s they were synced to 32mph. What I see now is drivers trying to do 40+ and getting stuck at the lights, thus backing everyone up. Maybe they’ve been de-synced, but timed lights only work for those who know how to drive the right way.
If they’re not synced to a couple mph below the limit, they should be. Drivers racing to the red lights will keep messing it up, though.
Hot take: the cause of traffic is cars, not parks.
I’ve got a winning idea! Let’s put a ballot issue up that…..reopens the Great Sandy Highway, and rebuilds the elevated freeway to block the Ferry building, and rebuilds the end of the freeway through Hayes Valley……
Why do bike paths break people’s brains?
It’s worth noting that none of the D4 candidates have expressed support for maintaining Sunset Dunes as a park. I think Wong is going through the motions to present himself as pro-Great Highway, knowing full well its essentially an incontestable issue at this point. He, and the rest of the candidates for the regular D4 seat, seem to understand that there is no way of winning a district election without stating this position publicly, even if they say otherwise in private.
Ever since Great Highway between Sloat and Lincoln has closed….The amount garbage thrown on side walks at lower great highway and graffti has greatly increase.. Those anti car people had call graffti ART. They turning Sunset into Tenderlion
Even crazy people like you get to vote, and I’m ok with that. But only a crazy person would think that the Sunset looks like the Tenderloin.
Please learn to think (and spell, it’s not “Tenderlion”) and come back. In the mean time, the sane people here will just ignore you.
The city really needs to get rid of district elections. By carving it up into 11 districts, each supervisor has his or her own little fiefdom and is not interested in the whole. But the decisions that they make for their district affect the entire city. Closer to home, I want Jackie Fielder to take a strong stand against the drug sales/use and illegal markets in the Mission, but she does not seem interested. Meanwhile, we have inherited the dealers and users that the TL and SOMA supervisors have swept out of their districts. That’s just one example.
Replacing district elections with at large elections would be unconstitutional.
No it would be constitutional, legal, and in fact we have had an at-large system before. The balkanization on SF has gone on for too log.
Supervisors obviously are unaware of the lack of use during the week.
I feel they should have done their homework before voting against putting it on the ballot.
Today is Tuesday and I was there around 4:30pm til sunset. It was gorgeous out. And packed with folks getting their outside on. Get out there – it’s going to be beautiful all week!
Yes, Sunset Dunes was a happy place at that hour – true. But equally true at 4:30pm Chain of Lakes Drive resembled a parking lot, a mini version of 19th Avenue replete with idling traffic, golden gate park choking with fumes belching out of tailpipes. Fumes of anger also went wafting up from the heads of frustrated motorists who found themselves trapped – all due to the whims of a tyrannical minority.
More than 60% of weekly visits are on weekdays, it’s very close to an even distribution!
This is just the typical lack of a grasp on reality they have. They have one priority only: drive their BMWs and Benzes on a private highway.
I think there is something deeper at play here. This was a high-profile initiative and any one of these clown supervisors could have stepped up. But, it would seem that they are all risk averse and there’s something forcing them to demur voting on this. I can’ t put my finger on it. Can anyone take a guess at why the supervisors would want to keep this silly park open besides placating the voters who think having a roadway for a park and closing traffic is a good idea?
We already voted on this, Prop K passed handily, and the road was turned into a park. Post election, the park is a huge success and enjoyed by folks across the spectrum – hardly a techbro on an ebike in sight. So what’s actually silly is voting on this again and thinking there’s going to be a different result.
I know this is hard to understand from inside your BMW. But the park won the vote. Most San Franciscans—the working class people who don’t drive big luxury cars—want parks.
OK…ballot measure time. This will be a full court press to get the vote out and if the game is played correctly, everyone will understand the folly of closing a major roadway for a goofy ‘park’ set aside for the quasi-nouveau riche tech bros who wanted a place to ride their e-bikes and thumb their nose at the rest of the District 4 residents. It will be much worse for the supporters of the park this time. Alan Wong blew it, really. This is his first major political proposal and he went down in flames.
There is also the thought that this might be a controlled opposition play and was a way to placate the power brokers at City Hall as a display of his fielty to them. He gets off the hook by trying and gets to keep his job too because the brokers want their stupid park. In any case, it’s a humiliation ritual and now, people of District 4 don’t respect him anymore.
In any case, I hope the supporters of the Great Highway get their ground game together to get the signatures to put it on the next ballot.
@vwhb705be – Oh my yes, people on two wheels are definitely “quasi-nouveau riche” and so much worse than the hardscrabble salt-of-the-Earth true nouveau riche who drive SUVs next to plover habitat like normal people.
Hurray! Bike-riding progressives from the Mission succeeded in making life difficult for working-class people on the other side of the city!
This is what progressives live for: to mock and demean working people. I’m sure they’re celebrating today!
Everyone I know who bikes is broke and working class. They can’t afford cars or car insurance.
So guess you live to demean working class people?
@Em – We are simultaneously broke and unfathomably rich with the world’s most expensive bikes. We are working class and also élitist tech bros. We are alcoholics who can’t drive because of DUI but totally privileged to be fit and healthy.
We are Schrödinger’s Bicyclists.
This is kind of funny imo
Urbanists that view SF as a Sim City are hardly progressives.
Engardio lied, Google lawyers lied, and now we’ve got plastic crap on a roadway.
Big win for environmentalism? No. Big win for privatizing the commons and skipping CEQA for big developers to gentrify neighborhoods against their will.
This doesn’t end here.
Please explain how converting a road into a park for families is privatizing the commons. It’s more communal now that non-drivers and children get to use it.
I don’t know what Google lawyers had to do with this. You should inhale less gas fumes.
I do know that the BMWs and Benzes of the Sunset don’t get a private highway now.
The rich people of the Sunset lost again.
This is why this cyclist hates you all. You’re casting working Sunset and Richmond families in the worst terms, projecting your prejudices on motives onto people with few options, all to mark your scent on another spot in your game of Sim City. This broad spectrum assholism perpetrated by many single issue zealots is why Engardio got shellacked on this.
The BMW and Benz drivers of the Sunset with too much time on their hands are the folks who removed Engardio. Working class people don’t have time for that. They also don’t need a private highway for their luxury cars.
NDP as confused as ever over the present situation. Move on, this will never go back to being a highway. Engardio was right in his decision to support. His association with a park that benefits the San Francisco will endure. There was no issue with CEQA, which is largely abused by people like you and there has been no issues with traffic. Both falsehoods.
40% of San Francisco household do not own a car, so how is making a space car-free “privatizing” it?
” I do not want us to be distracted by a measure that was not well thought-out, introduced at the last minute and constantly changing.”
I don’t recall Walton saying that about Prop K, for which it also entirely applies.
They wasted 50+ million on 2 intersections and skipped CEQA by lying.
They privatized the public commons and impacted 2 districts unnecessarily.
When the first cyclist gets run over by someone speeding around the Sunset, don’t come crying. You wanted that. You shall have it.
Are you high? privatized the public commons? Seriously?
Now you’re threatening to run over cyclists.