There’s a lot of talk right now about the Great Highway on San Francisco’s west end, and whether or not the city should close it down. This debate has been heating up recently, and I wanted to make a video about how things have evolved, and what we’ve learned from history on this matter.

Back in 2020 when the pandemic hit, the mayor closed down the Great Highway entirely and turned it into a park to accommodate social distancing. This was a bold move. People called it the "Great Walkway" because it was bringing in 27,000 visitors every week. The road went from cars to pedestrians... practically overnight.

A while later, car traffic was reinstated on weekdays only, but on weekends the space still remains as this multi-use promenade. Today, the Great Highway Park gets about 8,000 visitors on the weekends, which makes it the 3rd most visited park in the whole city. On weekdays though, when it's open to cars, it's estimated that the new "post-Covid normal" demand for this road is actually 38% LOWER than pre-Covid volumes. Obviously the pandemic redefined how we utilize our public spaces. Car traffic is down, foot traffic is up, and that's where this campaign to keep Great Highway closed really started.

But the campaign has gained even more footing recently, and it has to do with climate change. Great Highway runs along the beach, where there’s a lot of sand, and it costs the city about $1.7 million every year to keep that sand off the road, which is a lot of money for a city that is cash-strapped and dealing with other priorities.

So what’s the holdup? The public wants a beachfront promenade, and the city would recycle millions of dollars by just allowing it. Well, locals are concerned about traffic, especially weekday rush hour traffic. If cars can’t use the highway, they’ll jam up local roads instead, right?

Well, here’s the thing: cars have many detour options, including Sunset Blvd and the Lower Great Highway, which runs adjacent to the main Great Highway. And we actually know this, because cars are forced onto these routes when the city closes the highway for emergency sand removal, which is about 32 times every year.

And here’s the kicker: when that happens, the closures only create about 3-5 minutes of delay during weekday rush hour. So, to address the traffic concern, we know the implications of closing Great Highway when traffic is at its peak. Essentially, for a closed highway, a 5 minute delay is about as bad as it gets.

What’s more interesting though is that this isn't the first time San Francisco has closed down a waterfront highway. Decades ago, the infamous 1989 earthquake destroyed the 480 freeway that used to hug the city's eastern shoreline. Of course, people insisted that losing this highway would cause gridlock, and businesses would lose out. But when the cost to repair the damage was higher than the cost to rebuild it from scratch, the highway was finally dismantled. And the arguments about unbearable traffic were disproven as cars and ultimately people found other ways through the city. Today's Embarcadero is a beautiful multi-use area that San Franciscans have come to know and love. I guess the only question is, why didn’t we close down the Embarcadero freeway sooner? And more importantly, why did it take an entire earthquake for us to realize that we didn’t need it at all?

When it comes to closing roads, people, and traffic, will adjust. It HAS to. And the result is often beneficial for citizens and governments alike— financially, socially, and otherwise. We’ve literally seen this in our own city. But my hope is that we can make these critical evaluations of our roadways sooner, rather than relying on earthquakes, or pandemics, or climate change to drive these decisions for us.

So I hope that Great Highway does sees full time closure in the near future, just as the Embarcadero Highway did back in the 90s. Because I think we would all stand to benefit from it in the long term.