Should S.F.'s Great Highway be permanently closed to cars? West side residents are divided

Two rallies Saturday presented dueling visions for the fate of the Great Highway, San Francisco’s coastal boulevard at the center of a debate about how the city uses its streets and whether parks or cars should dominate.

“Closing (the highway) is not feasible, is not a good idea, and it wasn’t brought as a community-led compromise,” Sunset District resident Albert Chow, owner of Great Wall Hardware, said to a crowd of about 35 community members on Market Street.

Just two hours later, about 80 community members at a Panhandle Playground rally listened as Sunset resident Josh Kelly called the campaign to create a Great Highway park “part of a long tradition of San Franciscans reclaiming space in their city for people and not for vehicles.”

In November, voters will decide the future of a 2-mile stretch of the city’s westernmost oceanfront road. Proposition K would ban private vehicles on the Upper Great Highway between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard for good, turning it into a “transformative” park for pedestrians and cyclists, supporters say. For the past three years, the road has been closed to traffic on weekends on a trial basis.





https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/great-highway-closure-19670535.php