Proposition K Victory: Closing Part of the Great Highway Sparks Debate and Delight

Heidi Moseson stepped over a growing stream of water as she walked across the street from her grayish-blue three-story home onto the Upper Great Highway. It was raining on Veteran’s Day, and the road was closed to traffic and pooling with sandy water. At least 25 others splashed by pushing strollers, riding bikes and running in the rain.

Moseson, along with 54% of San Francisco voters, support Proposition K, a measure to permanently close the Upper Great Highway between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard. She said it would protect the beach, dunes and her neighborhood from erosion from extreme storms, flooding and future sea-level rise.

“This stretch of road is closed a lot to cars because the sand blows on the road, and it’s not safe for cars to drive, which is part of what makes it an unreliable road,” said Moseson, who has lived along the lower Great Highway for 15 years.

The sand-laden 2-mile stretch of the highway has been closed up to 65 times per year since 2020 and costs the city $1.7 million yearly to clear up the sand, according to the proposal. The proposition will close the section to car traffic, turning the four lanes into a park of sorts.

“The southern extension has already been legislated to close because it’s literally falling into the ocean. There’s a lot of us who look at this space and see this as our coast,” she said. “We have a lot of roads. We only have one coast. It’s a changing coast, which makes it not a good road.”

The roadway’s future closure marks a big win for environmentalists like Moseson, who want to prepare the west side of San Francisco for the effects of climate change “while also community building and having some fun,” she said. However, opponents are livid, and her neighbors are already planning efforts to delay or prevent the highway from shutting down. Proposition K does not set a date for when the road will permanently close and stops short of mandating what this section of the beachside highway park could eventually look like. “Rest assured — we’re not giving up,” Vin Budhai, manager of the No on K campaign, said in an email.

The San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department will apply for a permit with the California Coastal Commission next year. The city will also need to amend its general plan. Once attained, the dream phase will begin, and San Francisco will need to secure funding to establish the park, said District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, who cosponsored Proposition K.

“The sky’s the limit,” Engardio said. “It’s already a successful park, but we want it to be an even grander park. That’s the fun part, and then it’s just evolving the park into what people imagine it to be.”

Engardio said there will be a robust open process to determine what the park could become, ranging from “low-cost amenities like park benches and picnic tables” or paths meandering through dunes or “activating the space with art and entertainment.” The Friends of Great Highway Park group already acquired a permit and rolled a piano to the intersection at Noriega Avenue to help “San Francisco unleash its creative potential,” according to the group’s Instagram.

The SF Chronicle’s editorial board endorsed the proposition and floated the idea that the highway could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the city to build a park reminiscent of New York City’s Highline Park — an abandoned elevated rail line the city transformed into a walkway with colorful gardens, art installations, food vendors and curated community programs.

‘A majority in the Sunset voted No’

While some environmentally minded neighbors are celebrating the passage of Proposition K, there is growing anger amongst Westside residents over the measure.

The result of the Proposition K vote is a tale of two cities.

San Francisco’s westside residents in Districts 1, 4, 7 and 11, encompassing the Richmond, Sunset and Excelsior neighborhoods, voted overwhelmingly No — 39% against to 61% for the proposition.

The results were the opposite across the rest of the city to the east, with 64% of voters approving and 36% opposing.

The No campaign told KQED it is exploring options for retaliation: ways to delay the closing of the road, lawsuits and possibly recalling Supervisor Engardio.

“Closing this part of the Great Highway just doesn’t make sense,” Budhai said. “It’s a main route that thousands of people use every day — families, workers, commuters.”

Budhai and other Westsiders said they feel “betrayed” by Engardio because “he promised voters when he was running for supervisor he’d let the Great Highway pilot program run its course.”

Richie Greenberg authored the No on Prop K ballot argument. He said the difference showcases a divide in the city and a disconnect between Engardio and his constituents.

The No campaign is considering ways to legally challenge the proposition, stating that because the physical road will remain open for emergency access and government vehicles, it ultimately “cannot be torn up,” Greenberg said. He argues the Great Highway already has a promenade that runs parallel to the road. “We don’t need another one,” he adds.

“The voters, the residents, are livid,” he said. “They are up in arms, and they want justice. They want accountability. Engardio has been in office for two years, and in my opinion, he is the most politically vulnerable elected official in our city today.”

Richard Correia, also with the No on Prop K campaign, said the group is gathering to consider the next steps, including a potential recall.

“There’s a lot of anger out there in the community, and some action has to come on that, whether it’s a recall or beginning a campaign to see that Joel is a one-term supervisor,” he said. “That’s the question right now.”

The rallying cry behind the No campaign is that the plan will reroute tens of thousands of cars through neighborhoods ill-equipped to handle the congestion. Correia thinks Engardio and the Yes campaign should have baked solutions for the potential traffic woes into the proposition.

“They let the cart go before the horse,” he said. “The traffic congestion out here is bad, and it’s going to get a whole lot worse by forcing cars into the neighborhoods.”

Julia Quon, who lives in the Parkside neighborhood, is very concerned about the traffic, especially for elders in the community who rely on the Great Highway to get to medical appointments.

“I want to make sure monolingual Chinese-speaking families, folks who take their grandparents to Kaiser once a week, voices are being heard,” she said. “We’re the ones that are affected by this. I want more transparent decision-making processes going forward.”

Engardio told KQED that Sunset residents came to him with the idea for Proposition K, and he supported their desire because it could “be good for the environment, and it’s going to be great for small businesses.”

He said he would like to address traffic concerns by replacing stop signs with traffic signals on streets like Lincoln Way or Sunset Boulevard “to make them flow better.”

“A majority in the Sunset voted No. But what everyone agrees on, whether you voted Yes or No, is that people want good traffic flow and safe streets for pedestrians in their local neighborhoods,” Engardio said.

‘Let’s plan for the changing coast’ 

The road closure could benefit the area by rehabilitating dunes as a buffer against extreme storms, wind and sea-level rise.

There are three sections to the Great Highway in San Francisco. The road between Point Lobos Avenue to Lincoln Way will remain open. Proposition K will someday eliminate car traffic in the middle section from Lincoln Way to Sloat Boulevard. Then, the section between Sloat and Skyline boulevards of the highway farther south is slated to close in early 2026 because of erosion.

Moseson is worried that the eroded cliffs falling into the Pacific Ocean just south of her home will continue to move up the coast into her neighborhood. That’s a major reason she favors making the existing streets a “buffer zone” from the extreme storms and waves eating away the beach.

“Let’s plan for the changing coast that we see and make sure that drivers can still get where they need to go, ” she said.

Young climate-minded westside residents like Quon, 28, don’t think the argument that closing this portion of the highway is a “realistic” climate solution because rerouting thousands of cars daily into neighborhoods will increase local emissions and because the proposition doesn’t outline plans to shore up traffic issues.

“How are we going to tell people we’re pro-climate change but not give them any alternatives,” she said. “I don’t think it represents the voices and the wants of what people need in the neighborhood.”

Emergency vehicles will still have access to the road, which is open to car traffic on weekdays and closed on weekends and holidays. San Francisco closed part of the Great Highway to car traffic during a COVID-19 pandemic-era pilot program, allowing people to bicycle, skate, walk and listen to live music performances along the historic road.

In October, the San Francisco Estuary Institute published a report detailing three future scenarios for the highway: banning cars, maintaining the status quo or returning cars altogether. The authors found that “closing the roadway to cars entirely has the greatest and most immediate ecological benefits,” the report said.

An environmental scientist with the group, Cate Jaffe, recommended any plans to include increasing native plants, installing wildlife-friendly lighting and plenty of educational signage to help guide people to the beach instead of over dunes. The park could also be one of the city’s largest open land spaces connecting Golden Gate Park to Lake Merced.

“Wildlife movement through urban spaces is very difficult; there’s a lot of frightening things such as noise, light and people [and with] this open space is more of a navigable space if you’re a bird or a butterfly or a tiny critter,” she said.

KQED’s Juan Carlos Lara contributed to this report.