San Francisco’s Uphill Battle to Transform a Historic Highway Into a Park

On a chilly play successful mid-September, the wind-blasted dunes of San Francisco’s Ocean Beach loomed implicit the Great Highway — 2 lanes that tally on the Pacific seashore successful either absorption separated by a median of soil and crystal works succulents. In a conception of the southbound lanes, the Autumn Moon Festival reverberated with a DJ’s tunes. Birds squawked successful enactment overhead, and squealing children tumbled down the dunes and scribbled the roadworthy with chalk. From the apical of the sandy bumps, betwixt clumps of beachgrass, you could spot monolithic instrumentality ships sailing retired of the Golden Gate and into that celebrated fog.

The evening represented a compromise. In the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, the metropolis of San Francisco closed the Great Highway and turned it into a promenade, overmuch arsenic different cities blocked disconnected roads to fto radical roam freely and defy the impulse to stitchery indoors. When lockdowns eased and beingness returned to a caller benignant of mean successful 2021, the metropolis reduced the closure of the road to holidays and weekends, opening each Friday astatine noon and ending connected Mondays astatine 6 a.m. Drivers got to support a postulation artery successful occidental San Francisco, and pedestrians, rollerbladers, and cyclists got their play fun.

Just disconnected the highway, Joel Engardio stood atop a tiny bump of a soil dune, dressed successful a achromatic overgarment and bluish jeans, and watched his constituents stitchery astir a accepted Chinese lion dance. The Autumn Moon Festival was conscionable a sampling of what Engardio, a subordinate of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, wants to see. When San Franciscans spell to the polls connected November 5, they’ll ballot connected Engardio’s Proposition K, a bid to permanently adjacent a 2-mile agelong of the Great Highway to make 2,000 acres of continuous recreation space.

“It’s go the third-most-visited parkland successful each of San Francisco, and we haven’t enactment a dime into it,” said Engardio, whose territory extends inland for 2 twelve blocks from the Great Highway. “There’s not 1 amenity. It’s virtually conscionable closing the gross and conscionable having a closed roadworthy pavement connected the weekends.”

If anyone tin crook a road into precise overmuch not a highway, it’s San Francisco, but adjacent successful specified a deep-blue city, Prop K has been a pugnacious sell. Opponents person waged a run to descend the measure, arguing that it would summation commute times and trim concern connected broadside streets. Proponents deliberation that it would pb to much ft and motorcycle postulation and besides gully successful much tourists, giving a boost to section businesses. And they accidental that making the Great Highway a parkland would amended sorb the rising oversea — immoderate estimates person levels astir San Francisco Bay climbing more than 6 feet by the extremity of the period — and slash the conveyance emissions that contributed to clime alteration successful the archetypal place.

“It’s connected the ballot due to the fact that alteration is hard, and radical defy change,” Engardio said. “The astir open, transparent, antiauthoritarian mode to resoluteness this struggle is to spell to the ballot and fto everyone person a say. The seashore belongs to everyone, belongs to each San Franciscans — does not beryllium to 1 car, driver, oregon 1 cyclist, oregon adjacent 1 neighborhood.”

What mightiness look similar a squabble betwixt San Franciscans is successful information emblematic of the conflict for the aboriginal of coastal cities astir the United States. Should engineers deploy much earthy infrastructure similar soil dunes to enactment with the water alternatively of investing successful seawalls that combat against it? Should municipality planners support designing for the automobile, arsenic American cities person done for astir a century, oregon promote urbanites to locomotion oregon bike? How bash we reconcile what quality wants versus what radical want?

San Francisco is astir to find out—and possibly make a roadmap for different cities to follow.

Two days aft the festival, Heidi Moseson walked a pedestrian way supra the Great Highway’s northbound lanes. Moseson is vice president of the assemblage nonprofit Friends of Great Highway Park, which is promoting Prop K. Wearing a lightweight sweater and wool cap, she has that singular vibe of an Ocean Beacher — not a full-tilt California surfer stereotype, but chiseled from the fuddy-duddies that populate tony Nob Hill and Pacific Heights successful San Francisco’s core.

It was a precocious Monday afternoon, truthful cars and motorcycles rolled by successful waves, punctuated by the 9 stoplights and crosswalks that let pedestrians to transverse to the beach. During lockdown, erstwhile vehicles evaporated from the Great Highway, Moseson’s household replaced 1 of their cars with an e-bike. “This benignant of cliched story,” Moseson said. “It was this real, lived example: Sometimes erstwhile you marque abstraction for pedestrians and cyclists, immoderate radical alteration the mode they get around.”

When the lockdown was lifted, the Great Highway closure shifted to weekends and holidays only, with the eventual program to reopen the roadworthy full-time connected December 31, 2025. But past Moseson and different assemblage leaders got to thinking: Why not marque the closure permanent? San Francisco holds metropolis elections successful adjacent years, truthful this November is the past predetermination to get the contented connected the ballot earlier the Great Highway reverts to however it was utilized before. “Let’s enactment it to the voters,” Moseson said. “If we win, it sends a hopefully beardown signal, and we tin halt talking astir this and rehashing this.”

Prop K does not accidental thing astir what a Great Highway parkland mightiness look like. It could extremity up gaining playgrounds, creation installations, oregon an amphitheater. The measurement conscionable says that the roadworthy indispensable adjacent to cars and trucks and motorcycles, excepting exigency and different authorities vehicles. And it wouldn’t unopen down the full 3.5 miles of the Great Highway, lone a 2-mile, no-exit stretch.

Still, opponents deliberation closing that 2-mile conception would make excessively overmuch of a load for motorists coming from the Richmond District northbound of the projected park. “The existent measure moves from a compromise that enjoys a consensus, to thing that is precise extreme, conscionable closing it to cars,” said Matt Boschetto, who is simply a campaigner for supervisor for the territory eastbound of Engardio’s, and besides down the committee Great Highway for All — No connected K. “It doesn’t person immoderate plans for the park. I deliberation that’s connected purpose, due to the fact that I truly don’t deliberation they program connected gathering a park. I deliberation it’s truly conscionable to adjacent this disconnected to cars and usage it arsenic an unfastened space.”

It was hard to get different opponents to marque their case. Richie Greenberg, who authored the absorption statement against Prop K connected the ballot, referred Grist to Boschetto for comment. Another radical opposing the measure, Open the Great Highway, did not supply remark for this communicative aft repeated requests. The bureau of Connie Chan, the incumbent supervisor for the Richmond District who does not support afloat closing the road to vehicles, besides didn’t respond to galore requests for comment.

While San Francisco teems with tourists astatine the Golden Gate Bridge, successful Union Square, and astatine Golden Gate Park, the thought with Prop K is to lure much of them retired to Ocean Beach. That could, successful turn, stimulate concern for the restaurants, cafes, and boutiques on the highway’s broadside streets.

To Boschetto, however, locals would wage the terms for a closure of the Great Highway, arsenic it would beryllium much hard for the residents of the Richmond and the Sunset districts to determination betwixt the 2 neighborhoods. “This is going to beryllium destructive to the businesses connected either end,” helium said. (Albert Chow, who opposes the measurement arsenic president of the merchant radical People of Parkside Sunset, did not instrumentality aggregate requests to speech astir concern owners’ concerns.)

Jeremiah Boehner, an Army seasoned who’s moving against Chan to correspond the Richmond connected the committee of supervisors, says that Prop K would besides marque it harder for radical trying to get to and from the San Francisco VA Medical Center adjacent the northwest seashore of the city. “You tin already spot that closing the Great Highway aboriginal connected Fridays has had a large antagonistic interaction connected traffic,” Boehner said. “I’ve spoken to radical who enactment astatine the VA and veterans, and it has dramatically accrued their thrust times.”

Proponents, though, constituent to a multitude of imaginable benefits. For the homeowners surviving on the Great Highway, a parkland could rise the worth of their property, said Mark Jacobsen, an economist who studies proscription astatine the University of California, San Diego. And past determination are the carnal and intelligence wellness benefits — and consequent savings connected wellness attraction — that are harder to quantify: less radical sitting successful cars, much radical getting astir by moving their bodies. Replacing a car thrust with a motorcycle thrust reduces not lone planet-warming greenhouse gases, but besides sound contamination and the particulate substance that tin marque metropolis aerial noxious. “In general, parks and unfastened spaces look to person much benefits than costs,” Jacobsen said.

Hints to what could beryllium the Great Highway’s aboriginal are conscionable up the roadworthy connected JFK Drive. It weaves done the entirety of Golden Gate Park — itself implicit 1,000 acres of meadows, museums, sports fields, lakes, and adjacent a bison paddock — terminating astatine the Great Highway. During the pandemic, the metropolis closed the eastbound information of JFK to backstage vehicles seven days a week to fto San Franciscans agelong their legs. In the 2022 election, 65 percent of voters rejected a proposition that would person reopened this JFK Promenade to vehicles and required that the Great Highway beryllium unfastened to cars astatine each times. “It failed citywide successful a landslide,” Engardio said.

Now, connected immoderate fixed weekend, you tin motorcycle westbound from Haight-Ashbury astatine the eastbound borderline of Golden Gate Park done a mile-and-a-half JFK promenade —full of creation installations, a brew and vino garden, and pianos for radical to diddle on. Cutting implicit to different car-free street, past different with protected motorcycle lanes, you tin rotation wide to Ocean Beach and down the Great Highway, seldom sharing abstraction with a conveyance for much than 5 miles. If Prop K is approved, that country to roam would beryllium a imperishable diagnostic of San Francisco: A Great Highway parkland would link Golden Gate Park and Lake Merced to the south, creating 2,000 acres of contiguous nationalist space.

All that greenery mightiness make much than conscionable a elephantine playground for San Francisco, according to researchers. Connecting the JFK Promenade and the Great Highway could relieve postulation congestion by encouraging radical to motorcycle that miles-long way to get to enactment alternatively of driving downtown, said Jason Mark Henderson, who studies municipality cycling astatine San Francisco State University. Research has shown that the much you amended infrastructure for radical to commute by bike, the much they’ll take to bike, slashing their c footprint. It turns into a benignant of self-reinforcing cycle.

In New York City and Washington, D.C., for instance, bicycle commuting doubled betwixt 2009 and 2014 acknowledgment to amended infrastructure and bike-share programs. Between 2020 and 2023, spending connected bikes and accessories successful the United States skyrocketed 620 percent. The proliferation of e-bikes — a marketplace expected to turn 15.6 percent each year done 2030 — has drawn successful radical hesitant to rhythm agelong distances oregon up large hills, oregon possibly incapable to usage a accepted motorcycle due to the fact that of a disability.

“The much radical acquisition thing similar that,” Henderson said, “the much they’re going to privation it successful different parts of their assemblage and different parts of their city.”

On April 18, 1906, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake shook and past burned San Francisco to the ground, destroying astir 30,000 buildings. The densely populated eastbound portion of the metropolis was virtually obliterated, forcing refugees westbound toward the Pacific coastline. Eventually, the horse-drawn buggy yielded to the automobile, and to assistance drivers navigate Ocean Beach — a coastal getaway – the metropolis built the Great Highway successful 1929.

In the ensuing decades, San Francisco, similar truthful galore different large American cities, was sliced up by freeways. The largest effort, the Federal-Aid Highway Act, passed successful 1956, aimed to regenerate unsafe roads and velocity up question betwixt large cities by gathering immoderate 41,000 miles of interstate highways, which worked good enough. But it besides loaded municipality neighborhoods with pollution, and sometimes chopped them disconnected from the remainder of the city. It was often the underserved neighborhoods that suffered the most.

“We transformed American cities successful the 1950s and aboriginal ‘60s by gathering interstates close done the bosom of downtown areas,” said Megan Kimble, writer of the publication City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways. “So we tin conscionable arsenic easy region them.”

It’s casual to deliberation that cities aren’t malleable, that they’re virtually acceptable successful stone. Yet decades ago, San Francisco went adjacent further than cordoning disconnected a roadworthy to cars: The Embarcadero Freeway went up successful the 1950s, connecting the Bay Bridge connected the city’s eastbound enactment to the Golden Gate Bridge connected its bluish one. Never a fashionable agelong of roadway, and ever an eyesore that towered supra the metropolis streets, officials projected tearing it down successful the mid-1980s, but voters rejected that for fearfulness of expanding traffic.

Then, quality intervened. In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area. Across the bay successful Oakland, portion of a freeway collapsed, sidesplitting 42. The Embarcadero Freeway survived, but with superior damage, truthful it was unopen down and, successful 1991, torn down.

In the Embarcadero Freeway’s spot grew a bustling boulevard that was inactive unfastened to cars, but much affable to pedestrians and bicyclists. Transit ridership roseate 15 percent, Kimble notes successful her book. Today, the Embarcadero is 1 of the city’s sightseeing jewels, wherever the Ferry Building and Fisherman’s Wharf pull throngs of tourists.

Many different American cities person knocked down the freeways that divided neighborhoods. Rochester, New York, removed a road successful 2014 and swapped successful apartments, trees, and motorcycle lanes. Portland, Oregon, turned 1 into a riverfront park successful the 1970s.

If you adjacent a roadworthy disconnected to cars, it becomes a spot for radical — perchance tons of people. Milwaukee’s Park East Freeway, removed successful 2002, is present location to commercial and residential buildings, arsenic good arsenic a stadium for the city’s nonrecreational hoops team, the Milwaukee Bucks.

But it often takes a combat to get it done. As New York City’s proscription commissioner from 2007 to 2013, Janette Sadik-Khan embarked connected a quest to marque the metropolis safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. In 2009, the metropolis closed disconnected portion of Times Square to cars, yet making the closure permanent. The determination was arguable astatine the time, with taxi cab companies and immoderate businesses complaining that it would thrust radical distant and marque postulation worse. In the ensuing years, however, pedestrian injuries fell by 40 percent and vehicular accidents by 15 percent. On its busiest days, Times Square present teems with 400,000 pedestrians.

According to experts, the information is clear: Removing lanes makes roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists, and postulation really decreases. “What you spot successful metropolis aft metropolis crossed the state is that erstwhile you region a large roadway, question patterns measurably change,” Kimble said. “Research shows that car trips alteration erstwhile you region roadworthy capacity. Travel is simply a bully — it responds to the instrumentality of proviso and demand.”

Still, adjacent successful progressive American cities, and adjacent with the pandemic creating exclusive spaces for cyclists and pedestrians, the car remains a cardinal diagnostic of municipality life. In June, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, killed a long-in-the-works congestion pricing system, which would person charged drivers a toll to participate Lower Manhattan. Democrats and Republicans can’t hold connected much, but successful a state wherever more than 90 percent of households person astatine slightest 1 vehicle, they definite bash hold that cars are a priority.

“It’s truthful ingrained into the thought of American prosperity that each American should person a car and beryllium capable to thrust wherever they want, whenever they want,” Kimble said. “Even erstwhile truthful galore different countries, truthful galore different cities, amusement that transit tin make tons of economical prosperity. And successful fact, it’s overmuch amended for low-income households.” For each dollar invested successful nationalist transport, a authorities gets $5 successful economical returns and creates 50,000 jobs.

Conversely, cars are expensive, some for radical and for cities. State and section governments walk much than $200 cardinal each year connected the construction, operation, and attraction of highways and roads. Kimble notes that the mean household successful car-centric Houston, Texas, spends astir a 5th of their $60,000 household income connected transportation.

Just arsenic cars are costly for families, freeways are costly for cities, peculiarly those on a rapidly eroding coastline. It’s becoming progressively wide that to decently support coastal cities, seawalls unsocial won’t chopped it. For one, a rising water has a inclination to devour distant astatine the soil underneath a wall, destabilizing it. In Miami, for instance, engineers are gathering artificial mangrove forests that mimic however a coastline people absorbs tempest surges.

Before pavement crept crossed its landscape, San Francisco was soil — and much sand, and immoderate much soil — stretching wide crossed the peninsula. Water pooled into “dune slacks,” which attracted coyotes, birds, and rabbits. Shrubs and grasses grew, providing habitats for smaller critters similar insects. The sands perpetually shifted, “mobile dunes” that were hard to physique houses connected successful the aboriginal days of San Francisco.

Out astatine Ocean Beach, soil blew perpetually inland, forming astir coastal plants to make vegetated mounds. Mobile dunes present would transmogrify, trapping wind-blown soil successful the vegetation, past erode away, past turn erstwhile more. More than immoderate different worldly oregon earthy process, soil made San Francisco. “It was a batch much dynamic benignant of ecosystem than what we person retired astatine Ocean Beach today,” said Ellen Plane, a elder idiosyncratic astatine the San Francisco Estuary Institute, which published a report past twelvemonth recommending absorption options for the area’s dunes that could enactment with oregon without the transition of Prop K.

That’s due to the fact that today, Ocean Beach is imprisoned by the built environment. The Great Highway — buttressed by seawalls — has kept the dunes successful check. That paved roadworthy is similar armor, Plane said: “a batch much rigid infrastructure to clasp the shoreline successful place, which prevented each of that migration of the dunes.”

As it is, the Great Highway butts up truthful tightly against the dunes that soil spills onto the road, truthful tractors person to periodically scrape piled-up soil from the pavement. Sand buildup gets truthful atrocious that since 2020, the metropolis has had to adjacent the Great Highway up to 65 times a year, sometimes for aggregate days successful a row.
That costs the metropolis a batch of money. A report released successful August by the San Francisco’s Controller’s Office (the city’s main fiscal serviceman and auditor) estimated that if Prop K were approved, it would prevention the authorities astir $1.5 cardinal successful one-time superior task costs, and an further $350,000 to $700,000 each twelvemonth successful attraction and operational costs, including soil removal and roadway maintenance. The highway’s postulation signals would nary longer request replacing, redeeming the metropolis different $4.3 million.

A permanently closed Great Highway would incur its ain costs, according to the Controller’s report. That would see accrued trash pickup and ranger patrols, arsenic good arsenic caller postulation signals and retrofits to different streets to accommodate diverted traffic. A parkland would besides request workers to wide the soil disconnected paths, Moseson said, but obscurity adjacent the frequence that a roadworthy requires to guarantee safety.

But it’s unclear precisely what caller infrastructure the metropolis would request to manage, due to the fact that the ballot measurement doesn’t laic retired a maestro program for the park, a information that concerns Prop K’s critics.

“When you read the ballot, it’s shocking however small is successful it,” Boschetto said. “The lone happening that is successful it that’s truly factual is that it’s closing it disconnected to backstage vehicles. So it doesn’t person immoderate plans for a park, it doesn’t person immoderate sources for funding, which is beauteous shocking.”

The metropolis authorities has a program for the southernmost portion of the Great Highway that’s already losing its conflict against rising seas and terrible erosion. The mile-long section that runs on the San Francisco Zoo is expected to beryllium shuttered by aboriginal 2026. Engineers volition regenerate the roadworthy with multiuse trails and a beachfront plaza. That’s successful ample portion to support a wastewater attraction installation adjacent to the zoo from coastal erosion, but besides to reconstruct the adjacent dunes truthful that they volition enactment arsenic a buffer against oversea level rise.

So drivers are already losing entree to a chunk of the Great Highway. Prop K would conscionable widen that closure farther north. A caller report from 2 metropolis agencies estimates that closing the road during peak-hour weekdays — similar erstwhile crews request to region soil — and rerouting postulation presently adds astir 3 minutes of driving time. The agencies accidental that postulation apt diverts to a six-lane boulevard a mile to the east, though opponents of Prop K accidental it really spills into smaller broadside streets, expanding congestion. The study further notes that mean regular postulation connected the Great Highway is down 38 percent from pre-COVID levels of 18,000 cars, arsenic the white-collar workers of occidental San Francisco opt to enactment from home. (Boschetto disputes the uncovering of 3 further minutes of question time. Residents of the Richmond district, helium said, “will archer you that’s patently mendacious from their ain firsthand experience.”)

Fewer radical are driving the Great Highway these days, and much radical are flocking to the country connected weekends erstwhile streets get blocked off. In 2023, 420,000 visitors walked, ran, and biked the play promenade. Last October alone, 10,400 radical attended a assemblage Halloween event, and an yearly amusive tally brought different 10,000. “I deliberation the pandemic successful truly hard ways showed that we each tin change,” Moseson said, “literally, tin alteration overnight, however we bash things and however we get around.”

Whether oregon not Prop K passes, San Francisco has to contend with seas eating distant astatine Ocean Beach, and winds shoving soil inland. Plane’s study from the San Francisco Estuary Institute suggests transplanting autochthonal grasses into the dunes, which would clasp choky to the soil — a determination the metropolis tin marque adjacent if the proposition fails. The study besides recommends keeping radical disconnected the dunes, arsenic trampling tin termination the plants that clasp the dunes together. That causes “blowouts,” oregon troughs of escaped soil that much easy spill and stroke onto the highway.

Opponents of the measurement accidental those improvements could inactive hap if the Great Highway stays a highway. “I deliberation currently, the inferior of the roadworthy outweighs truthful overmuch much than the inferior of the park,” Boschetto said. “So if we tin person solutions that are environmentally friendly, that support that country — particularly producing much autochthonal plants, particularly protecting and conserving the wildlife determination — that to maine is simply a monolithic win-win.”

To supporters, a parkland creates the accidental to beryllium a spot much flexible, allowing the dunes to creep inland and premix the earthy satellite with quality infrastructure. Sand roped disconnected to pedestrians could bloom with the greenery that people keeps them anchored. Foot paths mightiness interlace with dunes. “We’re not giving [the dunes] arsenic overmuch arsenic they want,” Moseson said, “but it would let capable abstraction to bash immoderate benignant of melodramatic changes that could help, adjacent if I wouldn’t recreate the archetypal conditions.”

San Francisco, similar truthful galore different coastal cities, is contending with the opening stages of inevitability: Sea levels volition lone spell up from here, infrastructure beryllium damned. But portion they’re presently a liability for the Great Highway, the dunes could assistance prevention it 1 day. As the rising oversea approaches, possibly the roadworthy volition inactive beryllium filled with cars — astatine slightest connected the days it tin enactment open. Or possibly the country volition beryllium afloat of creation installations and benches successful a 2-mile-long parkland established successful November 2024.

An earlier mentation of this communicative misstated the relation of the nonprofit Friends of Great Highway Park successful getting Prop K earlier voters. This nonfiction primitively appeared successful Grist, a nonprofit, autarkic media enactment dedicated to telling stories of clime solutions and a conscionable future. Learn much astatine Grist.org.