The Greenberg Brief: San Francisco Activists Seek Banning Cars Along the Beach

Activists in San Francisco have convinced a sufficient number of members of our Board of Supervisors to attack free movement of private vehicles along the City’s western edge, a stretch of roadway named “the Great Highway,” and place a ballot measure for voters to decide the roadway’s fate: to permanently close a section of the thoroughfare.

Never mind this specific piece of roadway, referred to as Upper Great Highway or UGH, currently serves upwards of twenty thousand vehicles daily, including commuters, delivery vehicles, tourists, students, emergency vehicles, event support vehicles and sightseers marveling at the Pacific’s waves and coastline mere yards off this road to the west. Gorgeous sunsets are a feature of the beauty of this area as well, with visitors near and far flocking at just the right hour (when fog isn’t present).

The Great Highway is a four-lane highway running North and South with a narrow center grassy island and featuring several traffic lights allowing pedestrians to cross the road for accessing the beach.

Yet to these activists, this two-mile stretch of highway has (allegedly) seen such a contentious and unacceptable existence, they have worked hard to influence city leaders to, essentially, create a solution in search of a problem. They want this strip to become a permanent recreation space, yet they disregard one of America’s great public parks just adjacent: Golden Gate Park. In fact, this existing road is one manner people arrive to Golden Gate Park when driving north from southern reaches.

Activists and proponents pushing permanent closure claim there is a need for public open recreation space. Golden Gate Park has met that need and much more, for decades, for generations. They claim a temporary, periodic closure of the Upper Great Highway, which indeed was instituted during the City’s 2020 Covid response allowing for walking, biking, rollerblading, taking a jog with a dog, is years later somehow mandated to closure permanency, while they again disregard the well-placed, paved joggings and bike pathway just alongside the existing UGH roadway.

This measure is not “pro-public recreation,” as evangelists purport; should voters consider approving this ballot measure November, it’s an anti-transportation, anti-freedom of movement initiative which unfortunately will involve the opinion of voters, many pro-bike – in all corners of San Francisco – in deciding to close a crucial link of northwest to southwest core neighborhoods bordering the Pacific Ocean. Many residents in far reaches of the City rarely even visit this part of town.

Ultimately concerning is the proposed title for this proposal. We’ve come to learn the importance of a ballot measure’s title and how voters can be deceived. Think Prop. 47 and the disaster it has caused, when it was in 2014 put on the ballot with a warm, fuzzy title: The Safe Schools and Neighborhoods Act. We know how deceptive that title was and the explosion of crime and non-accountability which has ensued. Voters were duped.

The permanent UGH road closure ballot measure is currently named: “Reserving the Upper Great Highway as Public Open Recreational Space.”  

Misleadingly, the preventing private vehicles (your car) from driving on this stretch of existing road is not the creation of a “park” nor a “recreation” area. Yet proponents insist on referring this pavement as a park. One organization supporting this measure is Friends of Great Highway Park; social media accounts advocating passage incessantly refer to establishment of a park and new recreational space. Grand exaggerations have come from pro-closure supporters, including statements that initiative’s passage will cause the UGH’s roadway to be removed and a meandering pathway for walking, jogging and cycling will replace it.

But that’s not what the legal text of this ballot measure actually says: The roadway will restrict (prohibit) private vehicles. Exceptions are emergency vehicles (Police and Fire Department) and city maintenance vehicles. In other words, the existing pavement will remain. A so-called park will essentially mean people can walk, ride or roll on the roadway. The proposal text also does not allocate funding to create a different, traditionally-appearing park nor does it, fundamentally, call for the tearing up and destruction of the existing road. Again, San Francisco’s voters are being deceived. Architects’ renderings produced by the pro-closure community shows various imagined renderings of what the Upper Great Highway would look like, to them, and yet few reflect the intent of the ballot measure.

Agree with the permanent closure of an important thoroughfare or not, an accurate title for this ballot measure is essential. The 2014 passage of notorious Prop 47 was arguably due to a misleading title as appearing in the voter guide. We voters deserve better.

In typical San Francisco fashion, one prominent proponent of this ballot measure is under fire, namely Joel Engardio. He’s the District 4 Supervisor (city councilman) representing the precise neighborhood where the UGH permanent closure would occur. His constituents are outraged as he has apparently not met with, nor sought input from, residents, business owners nor community groups. He rejected the need to do so, understandably angering the most-affected residents in that area. They know intimately that an UGH closure means the pushing of traffic to parallel residential streets, adding to clogging up those roads, increasing noise, travel time, and potential accidents. They know coastal air pollution mitigation is irrelevant as vehicles redirected a few blocks over will yield virtually zero effect.

As one local has put this, San Francisco’s West Side residents have been thrown under the bus.

Note: You can obtain the legal text of the ballot measure for review here.