On Thursday, I woke up, hopped in the car, and headed out to the Sunset District to see how bad rush-hour traffic could be — and what the pending permanent closure of the Upper Great Highway would, and would not, do to the flow of things.
In November, voters passed Proposition K, a measure that will permanently close the Upper Great Highway that runs along Ocean Beach from Lincoln Way to Sloat Boulevard. Since 2022, the highway has served as a car-free promenade on weekends.
Supporters of the full-time closure pushed ideas to create a park on the four-lane road, which they say has limited use because it lacks any turns into the Sunset community and is closed an average of 32 times a year, sometimes for several days, due to sand clearing and erosion mitigation, per a June study from the San Francisco Rec and Parks Department.
Opponents of the Upper Great Highway closure have cried foul, claiming its shuttering will dramatically worsen traffic on main streets in the Sunset, and even “destroy the neighborhood” with health and safety consequences.
But after hitting every alternative route to the Upper Great Highway and purposefully driving into traffic chokepoints on major thoroughfares like Lincoln Way, 19th Avenue, and Sunset and Sloat boulevards, I’m feeling optimistic about how everything will pan out. While it’s inevitable there will be impacts and slowdowns, my little experiment suggests a diffusion of extra vehicles won’t create an existential crisis in the community.
The city’s own review of traffic patterns earlier this summer suggested as much. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency concluded that the closure of the Upper Great Highway would add “approximately three minutes” of travel time during peak weekday trips. Much of the traffic would end up on Sunset Boulevard, which SFMTA claims can “easily accommodate" displaced traffic. Average daily traffic on the Upper Great Highway has fallen 38% since the onset of the pandemic, with additional reductions on Sunset Boulevard (about 30%) and Lincoln Way (about 7%), according to the report.
Now, some caveats to my drive: It was the Thursday prior to a major holiday week, so I assumed there were fewer cars on the road than usual. I also took into account that SFMTA has paused its repavement of Sunset Boulevard for the last two weeks of the year; that construction has caused more traffic by closing lanes during working hours, but will end in January, according to District 4 Supervisor Joel Engardio, who chatted with me on Wednesday about my planned drive.
When I got to the Sunset, I did discover some traffic jams. Notably, 19th Avenue — a key north-south thoroughfare — backed up pretty badly due to people turning onto Lincoln Way, which runs along Golden Gate Park. At its worst, it took multiple light cycles to push through the final stretch, adding a few minutes to the commute.
The intersection of 41st and Lincoln was also messy, which Engardio blamed on a lack of proper infrastructure and an influx of drivers cutting through the park via Chain of Lakes Drive.
“If you’re coming from the Richmond, we’re telling people to turn left on Lincoln and go on Sunset. But at 41st and Lincoln, there’s a four-way stop sign intersection. And 30 yards from that, there’s the stop signs at Chain of Lakes and MLK. So huge backups, right? But we are replacing the stop signs with traffic signals [in the future], and that will be transformative,” he told Gazetteer SF.
However, Sunset Boulevard was wide open in both directions, as was much of 19th Avenue south of the aforementioned backup. Sloat Boulevard showed flashes of traffic, but only for a few blocks at a time. There was no indication that the streets were flowing because everyone was on the Upper Great Highway; when I hit it at around 8:30 a.m., there were only a few clumps of cars moseying along the sand-stained road.
By 9 a.m., pretty much every route through the Sunset was moving swiftly, with Apple Maps showing a three-minute difference between using the Upper Great Highway and the alternate route on Sunset and Lincoln to get to the V.A. Hospital from Lake Merced. Some cars chose to take side streets to navigate past congested pockets, but it wasn’t very common.
Will Upper Great Highway traffic dispersing onto other roads really turn this situation into a hellscape come spring of next year? It depends on how many people are actually using it; the San Francisco Chronicle hand-counted 1,600 cars using the highway between 8-9 a.m. on a weekday. While that seems like a lot of drivers to accommodate, it calculates to just an additional 27 cars flowing in traffic every minute on alternate routes.
Other efforts, such as adding traffic lights and re-timing existing ones, will also help smooth the transition, Engardio said. He could not confirm when those improvements will be in place, only suggesting sometime in “early 2025.” Regardless, I’m confident that the Sunset and Richmond will be just fine. In fact, contrary to claims that the park project will hurt local businesses, I think it’s likely that bringing more commuters into the center of the Sunset will turn some of them into customers.
Fear and anger about so-called ‘road diets’ and traffic calming plans are, frankly, a default reaction pretty much everywhere around the country; it’s led groups like the Federal Highway Administration and the American Planning Association to call out common anti-road-closure talking points as misinformation.
Those emotional responses are at the heart of a campaign to recall Engardio, with supporters claiming that he refused to hear out constituents and pushed through the Prop K plan. The reality is more mundane: The current pilot program to close Upper Great Highway on weekends is ending next year, necessitating a new plan for the road’s future — a decision which Engardio turned over to voters, rather than the Board of Supervisors. When I asked him if he regrets pushing Prop. K, Engardio, who supported the D.A. and school board recalls, was measured.
“This recall effort against me is about one policy position,” Engardio told me. “But my recall is not going to change the outcome of Prop K. So it's important now that I work with every one opposed to Prop. K to address their concerns about traffic. If we can address that, then maybe some people will be able to take a breath and see the potential benefits of a future park.”
It’s certainly true that the park plan has stirred up a lot of hyperbole and drama, including a silly quote from a Richmond resident who spoke to the New York Times in November.
“The Gen Z-ers, they want more road closures and they want more cars off the road,” 66-year-old retiree Sam Hom told the paper. “I’ll be straight up: I can’t go shopping at Costco on a bicycle.”
Luckily for Sam, I’m happy to report that he won’t need to do that. On Thursday at 9 a.m., despite a wide-open Upper Great Highway with very few cars, a check of drive times on Apple Maps showed a three-minute delay if I took Sunset to Costco instead. Just as the city predicted.
