San Francisco’s surprisingly difficult quest to turn a century-old highway into a park

A ballot measure would permanently close a coastal highway to cars. If the City by the Bay can’t do it, who can?

On a chilly weekend in mid-September, the wind-blasted dunes of San Francisco’s Ocean Beach loomed over the Great Highway—two lanes that run along the Pacific coast in either direction separated by a median of sand and ice plant succulents. In a section of the southbound lanes, the Autumn Moon Festival reverberated with a DJ’s tunes. Birds squawked in formation overhead, and squealing children tumbled down the dunes and scribbled the road with chalk. From the top of the sandy bumps, between clumps of beachgrass, you could see massive container ships sailing out of the Golden Gate and into that famous fog.