San Franciscans Are ‘Fighting for Their Lives’ Over One Great Highway

Forget the mayor’s race. Forget ballot measures about crime and schools. For many San Franciscans, short of the presidency, the most important contest on Tuesday will determine the future of one short road.

It is not just any road. It is a quintessential California stretch — so magnificent, it is named the Great Highway — that hugs the city’s westernmost edge, offering sweeping views of pelicans swooping over the Pacific Ocean and of surfers tackling its mighty waves.

Proposition K on the San Francisco ballot would permanently close the flat, two-mile stretch of pavement to cars. The measure would turn it over to cyclists, pedestrians, roller skaters and dogs, charting a path, backers promise, to create the city’s next great park. Think the High Line or Hudson River Yards in New York City, they say.

But in San Francisco, where small ideas regularly lead to huge fights, the squabbles over the road’s fate have become louder than sea gulls at a beach picnic.

“It feels like people on all sides are fighting for their lives,” said Marjan Philhour, who is running for the city’s board of supervisors to represent the Richmond District, the neighborhood just north of Golden Gate Park.

She said that when she knocks on doors, residents constantly bring up Proposition K. Several have even cried while talking about it, saying the road closure would make their stressful lives harder and clog other streets.

On some blocks, election signs supporting and opposing the measure outnumber those for Vice President Kamala Harris, the city’s former district attorney. Some protests and rallies have turned nasty. And the San Francisco Police Department recently took to X to debunk rumors that someone burglarized and set ablaze a hardware store a mile away because the owner opposes Proposition K.

All of this for two miles of pavement?

“It makes us look crazy, I understand, but it feels like a core, gut, visceral kind of reaction,” Ms. Philhour said. “It’s a road, but it represents so much more.”

City officials initially closed the highway in the spring of 2020 to give people more space to exercise while remaining socially distanced during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, as people returned to work and school, the city kept it as a park on weekends and holidays, but reopened it to cars for the weekday commute. That arrangement is set to end next year, so several city supervisors placed Proposition K on the ballot to let voters determine the long-term fate of the thoroughfare.

The road rage over the Great Highway is the latest battle between residents who want more car-free streets and those who say it is already too hard for motorists to navigate San Francisco.

Polls show the city is narrowly divided on the measure. In general, younger voters and those who consider themselves progressive are in support of the proposition, while older residents and moderates are opposed.

Supporters include former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mayor London Breed, State Sen. Scott Wiener and some high-profile tech executives. Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief executive of Yelp, is the top financial backer, contributing $350,000, while Emmett Shear, the former chief executive of Twitch, gave another $75,000.

Mr. Stoppelman said in an interview that he did not frequently use the Great Highway, which is several miles from his home in the Pacific Heights neighborhood. But he believes San Francisco residents need more spaces for recreation.

“We need to focus less on the needs of cars and more on the needs of people,” he said.

Sam Hom, a 66-year-old retiree, lives in the Richmond District and drives on the road regularly. He said that residents miles away who do not use it may think an oceanside park sounds idyllic without realizing how much the change would inconvenience him and his neighbors.

“The Gen Z-ers, they want more road closures and they want more cars off the road,” he said. “I’ll be straight up: I can’t go shopping at Costco on a bicycle.”

Supporters say that in a city with 1,200 miles of road, there would still be many other routes to Costco. That is the theme of a new song by John Elliott, a father who avidly backs car-free streets. “Left on Lincoln” is a uniquely San Franciscan tune about traffic directions and how people can get around even if Proposition K passes.

At the Great Highway on a recent Saturday morning, Supervisor Joel Engardio, who helped place the measure on the ballot, plunked away at Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” on a piano that supporters bought on Craigslist and carted to a highway median.

“It’s a Rorschach test of San Francisco,” Mr. Engardio said of the measure, adding that he was not terribly worried about opponents who had threatened to wage a campaign to recall him from office for backing Proposition K.

He pointed out that many treasured San Francisco landmarks were despised when they were first proposed, but are now as quintessentially San Francisco as fog and hills. There was, once, even major opposition to the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Supporting this oceanside park is the right side of history,” Mr. Engardio said. “It’s going to bring joy to generations of people.”

If Mother Nature had a vote, she would seem to have sided with the proponents. A combination of drought and wind has resulted in sand being pushed onto the roadway, forcing the city to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to remove it for cars. The city would not need to clear it as often for pedestrians and cyclists.

Peter Belden, a member of the Sierra Club, said his group backed the measure because it was clearly better for the environment. And he personally enjoys the car-free Great Highway, too.

He held his 50th birthday party there one weekend. His aunt, in her 80s, was able to cycle on the flat, safe stretch for the first time in years. He once saw someone pulling a wagon filled with golden retriever puppies.

On the weekends, he said, the Great Highway is living up to its name: “It’s finally really, really great.”