San Francisco voters will, in all likelihood, once again weigh in on the Great Highway at the polls.
A petition to reopen a section of the former coastal road to cars has garnered at least 15,626 signatures, according to its organizers, more than enough to qualify for the November ballot.
Organizers with Great Highway for Everyone turned in boxes of signed petitions to the city on Monday. The Department of Elections now has 30 days to verify the signatures and, if substantiated, the Great Highway for Everyone Act will face a citywide vote on Nov. 3.
Right before filing the signatures, proponents of the measure, including Richard Correia, Albert Chow, District 4 Supervisor Alan Wong and grassroots volunteers, stood outside of the Department of Elections in City Hall.
Wong said it’s the most “contentious” issue in his neighborhood, and that the rest of the city did not realize its importance to the Westside when it was last at the ballot box in 2024.
Then, San Franciscans voted 55 to 45 to remove cars from part of the Great Highway, turning it into Sunset Dunes Park. The new ballot measure seeks to reverse that change, opening the highway to car traffic again on weekdays, and keeping Sunset Dunes Park open only on weekends.
The measure’s backers, who include District 4 supervisor Alan Wong, call that a “compromise.”
The intense park v. highway battle — which highway supporters have repeatedly lost — has refused to go away, playing out in court, neighborhood divisions, and Wong’s failed attempt to legislatively get the issue on the ballot in the June election.
Albert Chow, a small-business owner who ran in the District 4 primary against Wong and still plans to run in November, has doggedly led efforts against the park since its inception. He said he personally gathered several hundred signatures to get the measure on the November ballot.
“We’re seeking a fair balance between having fun, but also the real, everyday need to get to work, to do chores, take kids to school, take parents to the hospital, to see family, to shop, to all the things that are just necessary in life,” Chow said of the measure.
Chow said the campaign verified many of the 15,626 signatures along the way, and is confident that it can clear the 10,582 signature requirement — about 2 percent of city voters — “handily.”
A pro-park group is hoping to stop the effort, however: It filed a lawsuit last week alleging that the petition includes several “false or misleading statements.”
“San Franciscans have already made it clear that they love Sunset Dunes, and that they won’t let this vocal minority destroy it,” said Lucas Lux of Friends of Sunset Dunes, the group behind the lawsuit. “We’re ready for one last fight to defend the park.”
Jim Ross, a political consultant, said it will be challenging for the Great Highway for Everyone; the park already exists, and they are asking to remove what many see as an amenity.
“They have a really challenging path ahead of them to get this measure passed,” Ross said. “I think that they have to convince the rest of the city to shut down a park, which is very difficult.”
The campaign will need to rally the entire Westside, maximizing the Sunset and Richmond votes, Ross said. Ross said that the lawsuit also “muddies” the clear and direct messaging that passing this measure would need.
The park has become a popular destination, and the city has invested in it, installing a number of public art works and other amenities, like hammocks and a skate park. In the two years since voters first made the promenade a permanent park, it’s seen an average of 4,900 people each day.
Ross said that no matter which direction the measure goes, it won’t be the last San Francisco hears about the Great Highway. He likened it to the 1990s battles over the Central Freeway, which went to the ballot three times and took a decade to resolve.
“It has a political potency,” Ross said, and “probably won’t go away anytime soon.”
I look forward to this issue being on the ballot (either re-open or re-close) every year for the rest of the existence of the city.
Ah, the initiative system. Breaking California’s representative democracy since 1911.
I urge Sunset Dunes founders and advocates to reflect earnestly about this situation. Was it really necessary to start a forever war in your own backyard to establish this park. I say, neigh. It didn’t HAVE to be this way. At this point the return to the original weekend-only park is probably the right solution. It would be a way to press the reset button, to do this over correctly, and build much greater local support.
Your urging is self-serving and completely misdirected. San Francisco residents at-large have already decided this issue. I urge Sunset Dunes opponents to reflect earnestly on doing the hard personal work it will take for them to stop being sore losers and embarrassing themselves over a road.
Are we really surprised that “cost” is now becoming the excuse for Lucas Lux?
Who rushed to remove traffic lights, street signs, and infrastructure immediately after the permanent closure of the Great Highway? Who claimed the light fixtures were unsafe and needed to be removed so quickly in less than 24 hours? Who promised the judge the changes on the permanently closed Great Highway were temporary while moving forward with permanent impacts?
San Francisco woke up to a Great Highway that changed overnight with almost no community input. Lucas Lux wants, Lucas Lux gets. Without any community input.
No reasonable person would continue making “temporary changes” while an active lawsuit was still pending. Yet now, the same people who pushed these changes are pointing to the cost of reversing “temporary changes” to deny the Great Highway for everyone.
Lucas Lux and his nonprofit did it, so they should pay.
This is great news. I don’t like that this road will be closed on the weekends. Arguably, this is the worst time to close it because of the weekend traffic on the beaches on the coast. Sunset Dunes is a tragedy and a political travesty set in motion by a corrupt and demented politician. The people of District 4 are exhausted and want only to regain normalcy and peace in their lives. The Sunset Dunes also represents a type of class struggle between the tech bros and long time residents (most were born and raised and worked in SF their entire life). The Sunset Dunes vote diminished the long time residents and only a minority of people in San Francisco apparently enjoy the ‘benefits’ of the asphalt park. I also should point out that the fight for District 4’s identity is going to kick off after Lurie decided to rezone West Richmond and Sunset for new housing. A lot of homes will be razed to make room for crackerbox condos similar to the ones in SOMA that are sinking into the landfill. After the Great Highway opens, the next fight will be against gentrification.
Great Highway Drivers are one that paid for “street safety” majority of it.
🙄
Seems like a fair compromise to me. Everyone gets some of what they want and nobody gets everything that they want.
What??? This was decided already in a citywide election. Your suggesting a “compromise” is like saying Lurie and Breed should share the mayorship because then nobody gets what they want. Asinine. Suck it up and accept the results of a democratic and fair election.
Is there no limit to how many times they can bring this back? And once again they’re flat-out lying to voters.
This will be trotted out disingenuously in order to juice west side turnout for the next decade
I’ve lived on lower Great Highway for 19 years and have always thought UGH is a stupid road: It’s closed half the time for sand, there are no turns on or off, and now if they want to reopen it, we’ll have to rip out the concrete skate park repave it and reinstall all the street lights and traffic signals.
The compromise is dumb and expensive. IF anything, it should be made a two lane road on the east side lane — the one that gets less sand blowing over it.
100% full speed ahead to support Compromise Great Highway Plan. Reopen Great Highway that was politically closed led to safety issues in the avenues.
Voting to re-open the Great Highway to cars is a vote to add $750,000-$1.7m ~ to the San Francisco budget annually for sand removal. The dunes and sand are taking back the road whether the complainers like it or not – the great Highway extension closed long before due to coastal erosion. I’m betting on the sand in the battle of hubris vs. coastal erosion. In the meantime, hoping the sore losers behind the measure come to their senses and get a life.
Sand removal. Yes, they were doing that already as PART OF MAINTENANCE FOR COMMERCIAL TRAFFIC. It’s the cost of doing business for that road. It’s a non-issue. Perhaps they can raise the budget to have specialized sweeper trucks to keep the sand clear so that traffic can move unhindered at all times.
Let’s take reality: It’s a park.
Now, let’s imagine if it had always been a park and had *never* been a road. Just settle your brain around that for a second.
Now, would you recommend removing that park and paying to put a road in?
I mean, my mother in law is still pissed that the highway doesn’t go right into northbeach anymore, but I don’t think she’d be willing to pay to put it back.
✎ Lest we forget, the second Central Freeway ballot measure had false and misleading wording of its own, and many who voted for it thought they were voting for the opposite of what they intended. That’s the only reason there was a third ballot measure, with clear wording.
I wonder how many of those 15,626 signers actually believed the false and misleading statements on the petition. Or aren’t aware that it dishonestly claims to “restore” a temporary weekday/weekend arrangement by taking away crucial weekend hours, and dishonestly calls this downgrade “the compromise.”
Great news. Was a joke to start. Vote yes to reopen.
You lost the vote already. You Anti-Sunset Dunes, anti-democracy folks are starting to sound a bit like Trump with your election denying. Sad!
4900 is the average of weekday and weekend. 3800 on weekdays. Number matters bc the measure is to re-open on weekdays.
Chronicle had 1650 cars between 8-9am. Extrapolate that out, easily 7500 on average weekday https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2024/sf-great-highway-counting/
Sunset dunes is an interesting idea. But…not enough people are using it during the week.
According to rec and park:
3,800 visitors/day
Assume 12 hours/day of use = 317 people/hour
Spread over 15 blocks = 21 people per block per hour
Or about: 1 person every 2.8 minutes per block
Simply Not enough usage to justify closure during the week.
https://sfrecpark.org/m/newsflash/home/detail/2811
But like we already voted though
Well, if it takes three strikes…were over half way there. Let the process play out. God knows 80% of the propositions we’re forced to vote on should have been decided by our gutless BOS. Let the locals fight the good fight a couple more times and then take it to NextDoor in perpetuity. Meanwhile, Lurie wins big with Family Zoning.
This is a total joke. We should not be voting on this again – what is this, the third time?
We need to raise the number of signatures needed so we aren’t constantly re-voting on things we’ve already decided. Several times before.
“Re-open”? Let’s be honest here — they want to close the park. That’s not opening anything.
We live on the Westside. We love the park, and so does every other Westside family we know. Our kids adore it and ask to go out there every day. Also, the OTGH campaign is so misleading in their messaging! I think they know their position (rip out a beautiful, vibrant, beloved park) is toxically unpopular and can only hope to succeed if they lie constantly about it. It’s very frustrating that these totally humbug dead-enders keep attempting to undo the will of the voters by forcing us to vote on this again and again (and again). It’s so ridiculous. Sunset Dunes is here to stay! Long live Sunset Dunes!
These people constantly complained about “who’s going to pay for the park” [grants and donations, turns out], but they sure don’t seem concerned about “who’s going to pay to remove everything, rebuild medians, and install brand new traffic lights.” Or what the Coastal Commission has to say about it for that matter.