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

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