On the Great Highway, Competing Visions for San Francisco's Future

Last month, bike and walk advocates secured a huge victory when the eastern segment of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park was made car-free permanently.

Now, their eyes are on the next big battle: The Great Highway. This time, they have a key ally on the Board of Supervisors in Gordon Mar, who has openly supported the eventual full closure of the roadway to cars.

Video by Multimedia Journalism Class students at SFSU

“The transformation of the Great Highway during the pandemic—this unique and really iconic public space—has been incredibly inspiring to see,” Mar said. “It’s not just creating recreational opportunities for thousands of community members every day, but it’s also become a community space.”

A full closure is unlikely to happen in the next year or two while Mar irons out the details. In the meantime, Mar is working with the City Attorney on an ordinance that would cement the current state of affairs: the Great Highway would become car-free from Friday afternoons to Monday mornings, but stay open to vehicles on weekdays.

Split in the Sunset

The future of the Great Highway is contentious.

Those in favor of a full closure say the open space has brought their community together and created a safe place for families to get outside.

But there’s also strong opposition. Many Sunset residents didn’t like the closure because of the crowds it drew during the pandemic and worry about the spillover effects of traffic on nearby roads that were formerly mostly used for local traffic. They also echo concerns familiar to those involved in the JFK Drive debate about equity and access—both to the recreation areas and to work and school. And according to a new San Francisco Standard poll, just 35% of registered voters support closing some streets to car traffic.

Owen McDonough has lived right off the Great Highway for 13 years. He’d like the roadway to remain open to cars 7 days a week. | Video by Matthew Cardoza and Myron Caringal

“We became a crime-ridden, garbage-strewn parking lot, the street that I live on, when they closed the upper Great Highway,” Martha Lutz said. “Especially during this global pandemic that scared people anyways, having people come from all the way across the bay to just be jam-packed in our neighborhood. It created a lack of a sense of safety for me and a lot of my neighbors.”

Luke Bornheimer, an organizer in favor of closing the road to cars, said he’s been focused on addressing access and equity concerns from the start. He is advocating for updated accessibility ramps and parking reserved for people with disabilities in addition to an extension of the Golden Gate Park shuttle to serve people with mobility issues.

Michael Brown, who grew up in Hunters Point, says Ocean Beach has been a safe space and "escape" for him since he was a child. He'd like it to be car-free, but says equitable access is essential. | Video by Amaya Edwards

"There’s an amazing opportunity to improve the currently dismal equity situation of the Great Highway and kind of flip it on its head for Great Highway Park," Bornheimer said.

A lot of others are still torn.

Mar said he hopes he can help bridge the gap between residents in favor and opposed to the road’s permanent closure to cars.

Tara Sullivan, an Outer Sunset resident who grew up on 45th Avenue, sees both sides of the debate. | Video by Maximo Vazquez

“The high degree of contentiousness over the Great Highway closure really reflects different visions for our city and our street infrastructure,” Mar said.

Changing Tides

What’s the urgency for passing Mar’s legislation?

In March 2020 at the start of the pandemic, Mar proposed closing down the Great Highway to give westside residents a place to recreate safely outside. But as traffic resumed and schools got back in session in August 2021, Breed and Mar reopened the road on weekdays. The weekends-only closure will last only while Mayor London Breed’s Covid state of emergency remains in effect—which won’t last forever.

Meanwhile, Mar and the city have been working on improvements like adding speed bumps to nearby residential roads in the Richmond and Sunset districts to prevent speeding while the Great Highway is closed on the weekends.

After an interim weekends-only plan has been codified with legislation to last even after the Covid emergency ends, Mar said he’ll be turning his attention to the long term, calling on San Francisco’s transit and parks agencies to go through a similar planning process as they did with JFK Drive, which became permanent last month after several rounds of public input and planning.

San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department spokesperson Tamara Aparton said the agency has been doing ongoing data collection to find out how many pedestrians and bikers use the road, and will work with Mar’s office to plan for a permanent solution.

A final decision would require a vote by the full Board of Supervisors.

Mapping the Future

But this year’s ordinance would likely only be temporary. That’s because the southern half of the Great Highway, which connects the road south to Skyline Boulevard and south out of the city, is set to close permanently in 2023 as part of the Ocean Beach Climate Adaptation Project.

The $2 million project aims at protecting wastewater pipes that feed into the Westside Pump Station and Oceanside Treatment Plant as erosion has massively damaged the roadway and threatened city infrastructure.

A group of San Francisco agencies is working to redesign the portion of the Great Highway south of Sloat Boulevard, closing it permanently to cars in 2023.

The road will turn into a multi-use path for pedestrians and bikers on the west side and a one-way service road for the treatment plant on the east side.

The agencies also plan to build a new parking lot accessible from Skyline Boulevard for beachgoers.

On the northern side, a new pedestrian plaza will be adjacent to Sloat.

That plan has already been approved with design underway and construction set to start in 2023—hence Mar’s deadline for finalizing the future of the rest of the road.

In the long term, Mar says he’s in support of a full closure of the road to cars. That decision would require a vote at the full Board of Supervisors much like last month’s decision on JFK Drive.

But a full closure isn’t the only option on the table. The San Francisco County Transportation Authority issued recommendations in a report released last year.

The first recommendation would close the road entirely to cars.

The second would keep just the current northbound lanes open to traffic and create a multi-use path in the current southbound lanes.

Mar plans to use the 2021 report as a jumping-off point for further research over the next two years to inform a final, permanent solution for the road. He is in favor of a full closure, but only alongside improvements to nearby roads and public transit.

“In order to make such a major change permanent responsibly, we’ll need to address significant traffic impacts,” Mar said. “That’s key to me—ensuring how to adequately manage and calm traffic.”

Multimedia for this project was created by Myron Caringal, Luis Cortez, Hunter Troy, Sarah Bruno, Trey Owens, Sabita Shrestha, Justine Brady, Matthew Cardoza, Nadia Castro, Yesenia Zuniga, Lisa Moreno, Amaya Edwards, Jocelyn Hernandez Gomez, Maximo Vazquez, Karina Patel, Ximena Loeza, Oliver Michelsen and Yeily Mendez, members of the 2022 Multimedia Journalism Class taught by Sachi Cunningham at San Francisco State University.