A bike path leads visitors around India Basin at India Basin Waterfront Park in San Francisco on Oct. 20, 2024. The new city park is in its first phase of what will be a 10-acre park. The space includes a food court, pier and dock. (Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
San Francisco has celebrated the opening of three new waterfront parks in recent months, and come Tuesday, depending on which side of a contentious ballot battle is to be believed, another could be on the way.
Proposition K, which would permanently close part of the Great Highway to vehicle traffic to establish open recreation space, has become a dogged fight between locals both for and against expanding the pandemic-era street use change.
While the issue is one of the most contentious on this year’s ballot among west side residents, KQED spoke to several people using the newly built east side parks, who were less divided.
“Why not just make it a true asset and open it up for the residents of the city — especially on the west side, but for everyone — to be able to enjoy the great oceanside?” Tim Liang asked, pausing his run next to one of the new benches built from recycled Bay Bridge steel at Bayfront Park, which opened last week next to Chase Center.
Liang, a longtime resident of the Mission District, said he’s loved to see the addition of green and outdoor space in the Mission Bay area in recent years. He said enthusiastically that he’s definitely voting yes on the ballot measure.
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So is Meredith Riekse. She lives a block away from China Basin Park, which opened in April outside the right-field bleachers of Oracle Park, across McCovey Cove.
“In fact, a 14-year-old boy convinced me. There was an article in the Chronicle [with] him talking about it,” she said. The boy’s family “lives on the other side, and he was talking to his father about his arguments for it, and it convinced me.”
She said additional open space had been a game changer in her neighborhood.
“I have a friend; the two of us walk the dog, and we come down here at the end of the day almost every day to play with the dog and talk and look at the water,” Riekse said. “We love this neighborhood.”
Only Pete Brannigan, who walks his fox-red Labrador retriever Rusty along the new bayside path between the two parks every morning, seemed torn on which way to vote.
“It’s a large issue, and I really don’t know which way it will roll for the best use of everybody involved,” he said. “I grew up here in the city. I spent a lot of time out at the beach as a teenager and afterward. I enjoyed driving there and I’ve enjoyed walking the beach, too.”
He said he felt like it should be up to the people who live in the area to decide.
The Great Highway in San Francisco on Oct. 30, 2024. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
The Great Highway runs from Daly City through the Richmond District. The middle span between Sloat and Lincoln streets — known as the Upper Great Highway — was closed to cars in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since August 2021, that closure has been limited to weekends only, but Proposition K seeks to close the two-mile stretch alongside Ocean Beach permanently.
Proponents say the roadway has already become the third-most visited city park space in San Francisco — proof that it should become a pedestrian-only promenade full-time. Opponents believe closing the thoroughfare would disrupt traffic flow on the west side of the city and could deter people from coming to the Sunset District.
There is precedent for permanently closing a street to cars and turning it into recreation space. John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park, which had weekend and holiday closures for decades, was also closed weeklong during the pandemic. In 2022, the Board of Supervisors moved to permanently shut it down and create the JFK Promenade — a decision that San Francisco voters upheld.
Proposition K has been backed by House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, along with Supervisor Joel Engardio, who represents the Sunset, and Mayor London Breed. Proponents have raised more than $769,000 for the campaign, nearly five times what the opposition has raised.
China Basin Park opened across from McCovey Cove near Oracle Park in April. (Katie DeBenedetti/KQED)
Lucas Lux, one of the pro-Proposition K campaign’s organizers and a resident of the Outer Sunset, said it “asks people what they think the best use of our coastline is.”
He sees the two options this way: “Is it a park that allows people to enjoy the coast in so many ways they otherwise couldn’t? Or is it a roadway that doesn’t get you where you need to go anymore because part of it’s falling into the ocean, and it closes frequently because of sand buildup?”
The southern part of the Great Highway is very likely to close due to erosion, which also threatens the middle span along with sea-level rise. The Upper Great Highway has to be closed in the winter periodically to clear windblown sand, Lux said.
However, opponents argue that the proposition has been falsely sold as a park, which they say would be pricey to build.
“There’s no mention of a park in the ballot language whatsoever,” Michael Terris said. “There’s no funding for a park in the ballot measure whatsoever, and creating a real park along a several-mile stretch would likely cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars. This is just a fantasy.”
Bayfront Park cost the city around $33 million, and a series of parks planned to extend along the waterfront farther south into the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood will total around $200 million when it’s complete.
Terris also said that opponents worry about the impact closing the roadway on weekdays would have on commuters.
“Those cars will all be diverted to Sunset or to 19th Avenue, which are already overcrowded corridors,” he told KQED. “It lengthens the commute for people and makes life difficult for them to get to their jobs. It will also divert traffic onto the residential streets that surround the Great Highway.”
Though cars would be prohibited if Proposition K passes, the roadway would remain open to emergency vehicles.
Terris said the current compromise — which would stay in place as a pilot program through 2025 if Proposition K fails — works for the greatest number of people.
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“When there’s a lot of commuters and they need this roadway to get to work during the week, the road is open. And the road is closed on the weekends when more people can be out there and enjoy the space,” Terris said. “Closing the Great Highway during the week? There’s just not enough people that would use it to make that worth the inconvenience.”
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