A years-long battle over the future of the Great Highway in San Francisco may once again be decided by voters after the campaign to reopen the road to cars submitted signatures this week for a November ballot measure.
The Great Highway for Everyone ballot measure committee collected the signatures and submitted them Monday. The city’s Department of Elections will verify each signature in the coming days to determine if the measure qualifies for the November ballot.
The measure would ask all San Francisco voters if they want to allow cars back on the road during weekdays and keep it as a park on the weekends — which supporters call the “compromise.”
“This dual use is intended to ensure the orderly, balanced utilization of coastal resources, taking into account the social and economic needs of the San Francisco residents and their regional neighbors,” the Great Highway for Everyone committee wrote in an email.
The compromise was in effect for several years during the COVID-19 pandemic until a citywide vote on Proposition K in November 2024 turned a 2-mile stretch of the Great Highway into a permanent park now called Sunset Dunes.
The change sparked a movement from some west side residents to overturn the closure since the majority voters in west side districts — where the Great Highway runs through — voted against the closure. Voters in District 4, which includes the Sunset District, even recalled their former supervisor, Joel Engardio, largely because of his staunch support for creating Sunset Dunes.
The Great Highway for Everyone committee calls the proposal a “safe and sensible solution,” arguing that the closure has caused increased traffic on residential streets in the Sunset and on nearby thoroughfares like 19th Avenue and Sunset Boulevard.
Data from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency released a few months after the full closure began showed minor increases in traffic congestion along these main roads following the closure.
‘Unacceptable negative impacts’
“Closing the Great Highway has created unacceptable negative impacts for too many of us,” wrote Richard Corriea, leader of the Great Highway for Everyone committee, in an email.
Proponents of the park belong to the group Friends of Sunset Dunes. In a statement in response to the effort, the group called it a “deceptive measure” that will “destroy Sunset Dunes.”
The group even filed a lawsuit last month against the Great Highway for Everyone campaign, alleging that the petition for signatures contained “false and misleading statements.”
Great Highway for Everyone said in an email that “the lawsuit is a completely unwarranted attack on right to petition” and that the claims are “without merit.”
The citizen-led effort to get a measure on the ballot overturning Proposition K follows a failed attempt by current District 4 Supervisor Alan Wong to get a similar measure on the June ballot. In January, he did not meet the required threshold of signatures needed from his colleagues on the Board of Supervisors in order for the measure to head before voters.
Wong supports the citizen-led initiative. With voters now being able to experience over a year of the Great Highway being a full-time park without cars, he thinks another potential vote on the future of the park could be a more informed one.
“What voters have never had a chance to consider is a compromise option,” Wong said in a statement. “I trust voters to make an informed decision now that they have more experience, more information, and a fuller understanding of how these different approaches affect our neighborhoods and our city.”
