Our first endorsement of 2024: YES to a car-free Great Highway Park
Photo courtesy of Friends of Great Highway Park; image by CMG Landscape Architecture
The Board of Directors of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition have made their first endorsement of the 2024 Bike the Vote campaign, in support of a ballot measure to turn the southern section of the Great Highway into a 17-acre oceanfront park.
The new ballot measure would restore 24/7 access for people biking, rolling, and walking on the two-mile stretch of the Great Highway between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard. With support from Mayor London Breed, Supervisors Joel Engardio and Myrna Melgar introduced the measure on Tuesday, June 18, in collaboration with Friends of Great Highway Park and fellow supervisors Dean Preston, Matt Dorsey, and Rafael Mandelman. This people-centric road usage was first introduced as a COVID-era emergency measure. Since December 2022, this section of the Great Highway has been reserved for biking, rolling, and walking from Friday afternoon until Monday morning, as a three-year pilot program.
“It’s very clear to all of us that the measure aligns with our goal of achieving a citywide network of car-free and people-prioritized corridors,” said Roan Kattouw, President of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Board. “The city’s oceanfront should be accessible to people to enjoy, not handed over to private vehicles, especially when it costs the city millions each year to keep it free of sand.”
Already this year, the Board of Supervisors voted to make the Great Highway Extension, the portion between Sloat and Skyline Boulevards, permanently car-free as a climate change adaptation project. Sea level rise and increasing storm activity has been making the area vulnerable to erosion, and removing vehicle traffic and redesigning the area will help mitigate those impacts.
Under the new ballot measure, north-south vehicle through-traffic will be redirected eastward to Sunset Boulevard. In 2022, SFBike issued a “no” endorsement for Proposition I, a ballot measure that aimed to make JFK Drive and the Great Highway permanently accessible to private cars, and San Francisco voters overwhelmingly rejected the measure.
As the Bike the Vote 2024 season heats up, we’ll reach out to members and volunteers to help spread the word on our endorsements and get out the vote to support better, safer, more accessible biking in San Francisco. Sign up today for updates and volunteer opportunities.