Sunset Dunes: 1 Year of San Francisco’s Controversial Beachside Park

Alex Caffee walks through Sunset Dunes, a park on the former Great Highway roadway, to go surfing in San Francisco’s Sunset neighborhood on April 9, 2026.

Alex Caffee was starting his morning like any other, with a trip to Ocean Beach in San Francisco to catch some waves. In a wetsuit, a surfboard at his side, he walked over from his home a few blocks away in the Sunset District, passing through Sunset Dunes, the park that opened last April on what used to be the Upper Great Highway to much fanfare and controversy.

“It’s been great for the community,” Caffee said just days before Sunset Dunes’ one-year anniversary on April 12. “I just had a kid with my wife, and so it’s important for us to have a safe space where we can go to bring her and hang out.”

A year into the park’s existence, the traffic woes that prompted resistance to its creation haven’t fully materialized, city data shows, and hundreds of thousands of people have visited.

But even as Sunset Dunes’ future looks increasingly solid, its existence is shaping local political debates, and opponents remain hopeful they can bring cars back at least part of the time.

The park has fans across the Bay Area, but locally, it’s been mired in controversy since voters citywide in 2024 approved Proposition K, removing cars from a 2-mile stretch of road to make way for the park.

The majority of residents who live closest to the park voted against it. Since then, it’s become a lightning rod issue in the otherwise quiet and residential neighborhood, driving a successful recall against former Supervisor Joel Engardio, who publicly supported the park.

At the heart of the resistance for many angry locals was traffic.

“The traffic is just bumper- to-bumper all the way up to 19th Avenue. It didn’t used to be like that. You can’t get around,” a Sunset resident named John So told KQED while on a walk at the park.

While congestion on the avenues varies, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency found that traffic on the major roads in the Sunset is actually below pre-pandemic levels, and other analyses have found minimal impacts on average commute speeds.

The city has been working to install new traffic signals to improve the flow of cars.

Sunset residents like Haley Demay were initially skeptical, but have since warmed up to the park. She likes walking her dog there. Still, she is sympathetic to the traffic complaints she hears and supports a compromise where cars could be back on the road on weekdays, with the highway remaining a park on weekends.

“I commute to Palo Alto, and I leave really early, so I really don’t hit much traffic, but my husband works downtown, and he has noticed a lot more traffic,” Demay said. “I do enjoy the park, but I do also from time to time think, ‘Man, I wish it was back open to cars.’ It was just such a smooth, easy commute going down.”

After the recall election, efforts to put cars back on the Great Highway have largely been unsuccessful. A judge in January dismissed a lawsuit from a group of residents looking to overturn Proposition K, and current Supervisor Alan Wong was unable to get enough colleagues on the Board of Supervisors to back his ballot measure proposal to put a compromise before voters this November.

Their efforts continue, however, and a citizen-led ballot initiative is currently underway. They need to collect at least 10,000 signatures to put the fate of Sunset Dunes before voters, again, in November.

“It’s been almost two years now from when Prop. K passed to now, and that anger has not really subsided,” said Albert Chow, a local hardware store owner who led the recall of Engardio and is now running for District 4 supervisor.

He’s been gathering signatures for the compromise ballot measure while campaigning for his own seat on the Board of Supervisors.

“This doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing kind of a situation,” said Chow, who was a plaintiff in the lawsuit to overturn Proposition K. The group has not appealed the judge’s decision. “It’s more like bringing the neighborhood back to some peace, but also to respect what the Sunset Dunes park has become.”

Supporters of the park point to the longer-term challenge with the land underneath the Great Highway, which is falling into the ocean due to climate change. The lower portion of the road is already closed due to coastal erosion.

Sunset voters have another important election ahead, over who will be their next permanent supervisor, and the issue of the Great Highway has again become a key issue.

Among the five candidates running, only one, Jeremy Grecco, said he supports keeping Sunset Dunes open as a park permanently. The remaining five candidates — current Supervisor Alan Wong, Natalie Gee, Albert Chow and David Lee — said they all opposed Proposition K and would support finding a way to bring cars back to the Great Highway.

Still, getting anything on the ballot — and passed — could be a challenge, and the park is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

“I hope that we can be able to have a vote on it and be able to move forward after that, whatever the outcome is,” Wong said.

The District 4 supervisor frequently jogs along the trail in Sunset Dunes, but feels it’s feasible to exercise while cars share the road, too. He also has previously said he has new safety concerns about other streets in the neighborhood now that traffic has shifted away from the Great Highway.

A spokesperson for SFMTA said that “early data suggests that the closure has not adversely affected roadway safety,” however.

Many park supporters believe Sunset Dunes creates a safe space for cycling, strolling and skateboarding and other recreational activities.

Retired couple Yin Hone Ho and Ngan Kyaung Chin visit Sunset Dunes every day. They moved to the neighborhood in the 1990s, and said it’s been a great setting for their daily exercise routine.

“Every day, me and my wife come here and walk for one and a half hours. We get our 10,000 steps,” Ho said. His solution to the traffic debate? More people should carpool and take public transit.

Friends of Sunset Dunes, an advocacy group for the park, claims that 39,800 people visit the park weekly, on average, and that more than 1.7 million people utilized it during its first year.

During that time, the space has been a venue for art walks, holiday festivities, fitness classes and other community events. Many local businesses have also reported that sales are up, pointing to increased foot traffic along business corridors near the park.

Benny Bermudez visited Sunset Dunes with his partner to celebrate his birthday recently. The couple lives in Daly City with their children, and said they come out several times a month to play outside by the beach.

“It’s just like this is all positive energy. You see families out here. We came for Fourth of July last year, and it was insane — all these bands and stuff going on,” Bermudez said. “Honestly, we come to appreciate it. If this wasn’t available, we just wouldn’t come.”

For now, Sunset Dunes remains open. Residents like Caffee, the surfer, say they hope the issue will be settled soon.

“I don’t want it to go back to this weekend compromise thing because I think enough people use it on the weekday, myself included,” he said. “So I’d like to stop battling it out.”